All the Ingredients

Cooking from the Books: The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook

Bacon Boy graduated from college this week, and my mother-in-law has been here to celebrate this grand occasion with us--along with Mother's Day, and two birthdays. She has Celiac's Disease, so this week has been an experiment in cooking gluten-free. 

The first time I ever cooked for her, I used a cookbook that has long ago left my collection. The recipes required items (aardvark flour?) that I had to go to the health food store to buy, and that I never used again for anything else. The last time she was here I used some of the wonderful mixes from Breads by Anna: http://alltheingredients.typepad.com/weblog/2010/01/gluten-free-bread.html.

This time I wanted to try something else, so I went with almond flour. I found a small cookbook, The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook, be Elana Amsterdam. I liked the range of recipes on this book, and the pictures made the food looked yummy. Plus, I already had all the ingredients for most of the recipes, except the almond flour. For that I went to the health food section of the local grocery and bought Bob's Red Mill ground almond meal. It was almost $12 for the bag, but I got three full meals out of it.

The first recipe I tried was for Chocolate Chip Scones. I served these for my husband's birthday breakfast. They called for:

• 2 1/2 almond flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup grapeseed oil
• 1/4 cup agave nectar (I think honey would work just fine)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup coarsely chopped dark chocolate (this worked out to all but 3 squares of a Hershey's Special Dark bar--willing volunteers ate the remainder)

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, and lined two baking sheets with parchment paper (to keep stray gluten molecules at bay).

In a large bowl, I combined the almond flour, salt, and baking soda. In a large glass mixing bowl, I measured out the grapeseed oil, agave nectar, and eggs, and whisked them together. Then I stirred the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, until they were well combined. 

The one thing I have noticed about The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook is that very few of the recipes use any added spices. Gluten-free shouldn't mean flavor-free, so I added 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon to this recipe. Then I dropped the batter in large spoonfuls (a little less than 1/4 cup each) two inches apart so that there were 8 scones on each baking sheet.

I baked the scones for 15 minutes until they were golden brown. I let them cool on the baking sheets, and then served them with bacon and mixed fruit.

The scones were a hit. My daughter said they tasted more like wonderful cookies than scones. They, of course, did not have the biscuit-like texture of scones, and reminded me of coconut macaroons--nice and moist. My husband said he would be happy to eat them anytime!

Laurie Colwin's Old Fashioned Gingerbread

It is April in Iowa. That can mean warm spring showers and blooming daffodils. Robins hopping about on the lawn. Well, it is snowing little pellets outside. My daffodils have been beaten into the ground after two days of hard rain, and the robins are all wearing hoodies. It is April in Iowa.

To warm up the day, I made gingerbread. It made the house smell spicy, and dispelled some of the gloom from the weather. 

Laurie Colwin was the first person I ever read who was a "food writer." She wrote about her family, and the challenges of cooking for them as a working mother. I admired her because she wrote for Gourmet Magazine, but in an accessible, non-elitist way. In her wonderful collection, More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, she writes that there are three things you must do to make good gingerbread: use fresh ground ginger, use lots of it, and opt for golden syrup over molasses. I happened to have the ingredients in the house, so I was all set. 

Old-Fashioned Gingerbread

• 1/2 cup golden syrup
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 1 egg
• 4 tablespoons buttermilk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 heaping teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• pinch of salt

I had the last 1/2 cup of a bottle of Lyle's Golden Syrup in the cupboard left from making Alton Brown's pecan pie last Thanksgiving. (No Karo syrup for Alton, thank you very much!) I melted it together in a pan with the butter. I beat the egg in a small bowl, and added the buttermilk to it. Then I sifted together all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and added the egg/buttermilk mixture and then the syrup/butter mixture and stirred until combined.

Now at this point the batter looked very light to me. I wanted it to look darker, so I cheated and added a dollop of molasses. To intensify the ginger taste, I also grated in some fresh ginger and added 2 tablespoons of candied ginger that I had on hand. (I love ginger!)

I buttered and floured a 9-inch square baking pan, and put the batter in it. I baked this in a preheated 375 degree oven until a toothpick came out cleanly--about 30 minutes. You will want to test it along the way though, so you don't dry out the gingerbread. Mine got just a little too brown around the edges.

This recipe is easy and doesn't take a lot of time. You could certainly use molasses if you didn't have golden syrup in the house. Colwin says that it is fabulous plain. We ate it warm spread with butter. And then for dessert, I heated up some marmalade and spooned it over the top with a dollop of whipped cream. 

 It is spring in Iowa, and in my house no one is noticing the snow.

 

 

New Year, New Food: Stuffed Artichoke Hearts

The rest of my family was away for New Year's, and I got to spend a week cooking just for myself. When I don't have anyone else to please, I end up doing things like eating at 4 p.m. or 10 p.m., having just ice cream or just salad for dinner, or cooking elaborate meals of foods only I enjoy. Like stuffed artichokes.

I LOVE artichokes. My daughter once asked me what they taste like, and I couldn't describe them because the only thing that tastes remotely like artichokes is artichokes. I like them pickled--especially on pizza--steamed, and even deep fried. But my favorite way to enjoy them is stuffed because that's how I grew up eating them. And whenever I find myself with extra pork--like the remnants of the Christmas ham--I love to make stuffed artichokes. 

When I got married, I gave my mother a blank recipe book and asked her to write down some recipes for me. But every time I came home for a visit, the book was still empty. My mother was not a written-recipe kind of person, although she loved cookbooks and often read them from beginning to end, like novels. I finally sat down and made her dictate recipes to me like the Thanksgiving cranberry relish, and her pecan pie. I hoped this would inspire her to write down other recipes for me. No deal. Over the years my siblings and I have tried (and often failed) to recreate our favorite childhood foods from memory. Potato salad: I know she used yellow mustard with mayonnaise and grated the onion in so there would be no chunks, but after that memory fails me. Spaghetti sauce. Hamburger pizza that had a top and bottom crust with a filling made almost entirely of ground beef. And, of course, the stuffed artichokes. 

Artichokes are tricky to cook. They are members of the thistle family, and you need to prep them first so they don't stab you when you eat them. With my kitchen sheers, I started at the bottom and trim the leaves, cutting the sharp spike off the tip of each petal. I worked my way up to the spikes at the very top, and just cut straight across the top with a sharp paring knife. I also cut off the stem flush with the bottom of the globe of the artichoke.

When I first started cooking artichokes for myself, I did it badly. I trimmed them, stuffed them and baked them. They never were cooked well enough to be tender. Then someone I worked with recommended Barbara Kafka's book, Vegetable Love. If you have a friend give you five eggplants from her garden (it happened to me this summer), and need suggestions on what to do with them, Kafka not only tells you how to prep them for cooking, she gives you a number of amazing recipes. I now follow her directions for cooking stuffed artichokes--still keeping my mother in mind.

So after trimming the artichokes, I placed them in a metal steamer basket over water. I also peeled the stems and added them to the basket. (Artichokes are expensive and I didn't want to waste any of them.) I made sure the water under the basket was boiling, and then lowered the heat and steamed the artichokes for thirty minutes. When I took them off out of the basket, the leaves of the artichoke had opened more which made them easier to stuff.

At this point, Kafka recommends taking out the center leaves and the feathery choke from each artichoke so that you can stuff the center of the bulb as well as the base of each leaf. My mother never did this, and I don't either. I never seem to have made that much stuffing.

For the stuffing I used:

• 1 cup smallish dry bread cubes
• 1 cup of equally sized ham cubes
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
• the chopped, cooked artichoke stems
• salt & pepper

I whirred this in the food processor with the metal blade until it made a medium crumb. I added some olive oil--maybe 2 tablespoons--to moisten it. Then I divided the stuffing roughly into fourths so I would know how much I had for each artichoke.

Then, using my fingers, I started at the bottom of the artichoke and stuffed each leaf with a bit of the stuffing--perhaps 1/2 a teaspoon. I packed it tight into the bottom of the leaves which in turn caused the artichoke to blossom open a bit wider.

 When all four of the artichokes were stuffed, I placed them in a beat up old metal baking dish, and added water to the pan so that the it wasn't high enough to get into the lowest stuffed petals. Then I covered the pan with foil and put it in the oven at 350 degress for about 20 minutes.

While the artichokes were heating through, I made my dipping sauce. My mother used to make several. First was a mayonnaise-lemon mixture. I always liked that one, but now I don't consider mayo to be an basic sauce like it was in the 50s. Second, she would mix melted butter and lemon juice. Again this is a bit heavy for my current taste preferences. So I came up with my own mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a heavy sprinkle of Mrs. Dash's Table Blend. I can't rave enough about this last ingredient. It's a hearty blend of peppers, vegetables, herbs, and lemon--fabulous on everything from baked potatoes to scrambled eggs. It adds a nice balance to the zing of the oil and the vinegar.

When the artickokes were done, I sat down to enjoy one with a nice glass of red wine. If you have never eaten an artichoke before, you pull off one of the stuffed leaves, dip it in the sauce, and then scrape the stuffing and white flesh of the artichoke at the bottom of the petal off with your teeth. Kafka refers to it as "gnawing." For the leaves at the top that didn't get stuffed, just dip them in the sauce, and eat the base of the leaf. When you are done, pull off the last of the leaves at the top. This leaves you with the furry topping of the choke. Scrape that off with a spoon and cut the base into pieces, and dip those into your sauce as well. These are the final, heaveny bites of artichoke that make all the rest of the work worth it.

I put each leftover artichoke in a individual round plastic storage container, and refrigerated them. Then I just reheated them in the microwave for three more meals. So the next time you find yourself with leftover ham--after Easter perhaps--look for artichokes in the prioduce section of your grocery store and give them a try.

Cuppa Chocolate Tea: Coconut Cocoa from The Republic of Tea

I don't remember drinking my first cup of tea. It was just always there in our house, like milk or water. My mother made sun tea on the patio of our Phoenix home--six Lipton tea bags in a giant glass jar with a yellow sun on its side. (In all the years we made sun tea, we only broke one jar, dropping it in the kitchen, not on the concrete of the patio.) We drank gallons of it every week--Phoenix had a long sun tea season. And in the brief winter, my mom and I made fancier tea in the silver or china tea pot. We had two mismatched pink rosebud cups and saucers that we had picked out at my mother's favorite antique shop, and we sat around the table, enjoying tea and conversation. Of all the beverage fashions that have come and gone in the decades of my life, I have always, always made and savored tea.

I have been a fan of The Republic of Tea for two decades now: www.republicoftea.com. Their Ginger Peach is my favorite tea of all time--and I can get it as loose leaf or tea bags, black, white, or greeen tea, or even as decaf. I enjoy getting their catalog--especially since it often comes with a sample tea bag so I can try something new. 

I have been reading about their chocolate teas for awhile now, and decided to try one. These herbal teas come in flavors such as chocolate-covered strawberry, peppermint, coconut, banana, and red velvet, and are zero calories. Now I don't like strawberry- or banana-flavored foods or drinks, although I love strawberries and bananas. I grow my own mint to dry for tea, and I confess, the red velvet train left the station without me. So I decided to try the Coconut Cocoa.

I was intrigued by the ingredients on the label: Roasted carob, caramel malted barley, roasted chicory, dates, natural coconut flavor, cocoa powder, and natural chocolate flavor. When I opened the tin, it smelled like somone had put an Almond Joy inside--there was cocoa, coconut, and a hint of nuttiness. The tea smelled wonderful! 

The tea is fairly dark when brewed. The label on the tin recommends Coconut Cocoa as a "warming, low-calorie cup of dessert. Nice with a splash of milk." I tried it with a little sweetener and milk as a way to curb my evening craving for chocolate. 

The tea might sound like a hot chocolate drink with coconut--something along the line of cocoa. Even with milk in it, this drink is still definitely a tea. It does not have the body of cocoa (maybe if I had used cream instead of  skim milk!). And I think the chicory gives it a slightly smokey taste. 

I really like this tea. I gave tea bags to two of my friends who are also coffee and tea drinkers, and who had expressed an interest in trying a chocolate tea. They both really liked it. "It's the perfect bedtime tea," one of them said. "Lighter than cocoa." And since the Coconut Cocoa has a negligible amount of caffeine, I found that it didn't keep me from falling asleep. 

I don't know why I crave sweets--especially chocolate in the evening--but this great tea from The Republic of Tea has helped me curb my cravings at bedtime. It's priced at $9.50 for 36 tea bags--an inexpensive price to pay for more than a month of bedtime treats!

Cooking from the Books: Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie

It has been dreadfully hot for the last week. 100-degree-why-doesn't-the-air conditioner-in-my-car-work?-hot. It's summer, and I should be outside experimenting with my new grilling techniques cookbook, but all I want to do is stay inside in the air-conditioning and bake things that would be great under ice cream--like pie.

When I want to bake pie that's not the family-recipe pumpkin or pecan pie, I reach for one of our favorite cookbooks: Pie: 300 Tried and True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie by Ken Haedrich. I bought this book when it first came out in 2004. I had learned that if I want my husband to cook or bake that sometimes the gift of a cookbook prompts him to want to try something new. This book does that just with a glance at its cover. You want to take that perfect pie crust and fill it, bake it, and eat something yummy.

Although my strawberry plants are faltering in this heat (the crop was small but enough for our resident giant racoon to enjoy), the rhubarb is still going strong. I left a barrier of catnip stalks earlier in the summer to protect it from direct sunlight. So when the rhubarb is ripe and ready, we reach for the recipe for Dundee Arms Inn Bumble Berry Pie. In the note at the top of the recipe, Haedrich explains that the Dundee Arms Inn is on Prince Edward Island, and that bumble berry usually refers to a mixed berry pie that includes apple. This recipe uses rhubarb instead.

I started with Haedrich's double crust pie recipe made in a standing mixer:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour (I use 2 cups white all-purpose & 1 cup white whole wheat flour)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening cut into cubes
• 1/2 cup cold water

Combine the flours, sugar, and salt in the large bowl of your standing mixer. Add the butter pieces to the flour, and then with the mixer on low speed, blend it in until the flour forms coarse clumps--there will be large and small pieces. Add the shortening pieces and repeat. Add half the water, and mix briefly, still on low speed. Then add the remaining water, mixing only until the dough starts to form large clumps. Do not overmix, but make sure you scrape any flour bits up from the bottom of the bowl. Turn the crust out onto a lightly floured surface and shapequickly into two smooth disks, one slightly larger than the other (for the bottom crust). Then wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour before using. It was so warm in my kitchen when I made this, Ihad to keep the butter and shortening bits in the refrigerator because they were softening up at room temperature.

When the crust dough has firmed up in the refrigerator, place the smaller disk into the freezer--I fold it in half first and rewrap it. Then roll the larger disk out into a deep dish pie pan, being careful not to stretch the dough. Pierce the crust with a fork and sculpt the edge  so that it stands slightly above the edge of the pan. Place the crust in the freezer in a spot where it won't get bumped, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl combine the following except for the butter:

• 2 1-lb bags of frozen mixed berries (the kind I buy is blueberries, raspberries & cherries)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh rhubarb stalks sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch slices
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into small pieces

The original recipe calls for fresh berries. I have made this pie that way, and it was deicious, but I find that I get more consistently tasty berries if I use frozen. This is also about a cup more fruit than the original recipe calls for, and 3/4 of a cup less sugar. Over the years my husband and I have trimmed back the amount of sugar in our berry pies. We would rather taste the berries and the rhubarb than the sugar. Use your own judgement--my daughter says this pie is too tart for her!

Once you have mixed the filling so that the flour and lemon juice are distributed evenly, turn it out into the pie crust that you have removed from the freezer. Dot the top of the heaped filling with the butter. Next is the part that makes this pie so distinctive...and maybe a little weird.

Take the other block of pie crust out of the freezer, and using the large holes of a box grater, grate the other half of the pastry onto a piece of wax paper, being careful not to grate it into one large clump. I move the grater around and make several piles. Then, working quickly, put the grated topping onto the pie filling, making sure to cover it evenly. If it's a little clumpy, that's fine. It will look like there is too much topping, but it will settle and sink as the pie bakes so grate and use all of the dough. Sprinkle the top of the pie with 2 tablespoons raw sugar.

Then place the pie on a flat, metal pie ring and slide it onto the center of the oven rack and bake for 30 minutes. if you don't have a pie ring, place a cookie sheet under the pie--the filling will most certainly boil over at some point. After the first half hour, reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees and rotate the pie back to front and bake until the top is golden brown. This takes 30-40 minutes for fresh berries, and up to an hour for too many frozen berries like I use.

I check the pie every 10 minutes after the first hour, continuing to rotate it in the oven, and I know the filling will gel when the juices bubbling up at the edge of the pie no longer look watery. For this last pie I baked, it took exactly an hour and a half. At that point the filling was gelled, and the top crust looked deep brown, but not burnt. Transfer the pie to a wire rack to cool for at least two hours before serving. This pie is wonderful with ice cream on top.

For our twentieth wedding anniversary, my husband and I had a barbecue for friends. Instead of cake, we made five of our favorite pies. The Bumble Berry was at the center of the dessert table, and the star of the party. This is only one of the 300 fabulous recipes in the chatty and informative Pie. My husband and I are working our way through them, and highly recommend this book. It makes a great present for you and the pie lovers in your life.

Chocolate Bacon Doughnut Cake

Earlier this month, Bacon Boy celebrated his 21st birthday, and I wanted to invent a cake worthy of such an occasion. A while back, I had purchased a doughnut cake pan at Williams-Sonoma at an incredible markdown. Add chocolate, bacon, and the Chocolate Bacon Doughnut Cake was born!

I started by candying half a pound of bacon. I did this by cooking it in my cast-iron skillet with a seasoning made of brown sugar and a little chili powder for zing. I had to be very careful and watch the bacon closely so that I didn't burn it. As soon as I took each strip out of the pan, I laid it in a rack to dry and firm up. Usually I blot bacon with a paper towel, but this bacon was so sticky with the brown sugar, that wasn't an option.

Then I made the chocolate cake. I started by creaming together:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup bacon fat

I had the bacon fat from cooking the bacon--why not infuse the flavor from the very beginning? I whipped these together until fluffy--about five minutes.

Then I added:

• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Then in another bowl I mixed together the dry ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 6 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• a dash of J&D's Bacon Salt

A side note here:  If you haven't discovered Bacon Salt, it's one of my favorite ingredients! It is an artificially-flavored, low-sodium salt, that is vegetarian AND kosher. It is the perfect seasoning to sprinkle on top of home-made macaroni and cheese, and it adds bacony goodness to everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to chicken salad. I buy can but the Original and Hickory in the spice aisle at my Target, but there are other flavors: http://www.jdfoods.net/products/baconsalt. As it says on the label, "Everything should taste like bacon!" I use Bacon Salt almost every day. Back to the cake.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar with:

• 1 1/3 cups milk

Beginning and ending with the flour mixture, beat well after each addition until the ingredients are just incorporated. Stop as necessary to scrape down the sides of the pan. I chopped the bacon up, and folded half of it into the batter. Then I poured the batter into my two doughnut pans and baked them for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees. This amount of batter would easily fill two 9-inch cake pans.

After the cakes were baked, I let them cool in their pans for five minutes, and then turned them out onto racks to cool. Then I trimmed each half of the doughnut so that the two sides that went together were flat. The assembly directions didn't call for frosting between the two doughnut halves, but I glued them together with a quick frosting made of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and just enough milk to make a spreadable frosting.

Then I made the chocolate glaze for the doughnut. I melted together:

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Then I put that mixture in a bowl and whisked in:

• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar
• approximately 1/2 cup hot water

until the glaze was a consistency that would pour over the cake. I had assembled the doughnut on my cake stand, and put strips of waxed paper around it to catch the glaze overflow. As soon as the glaze was on the cake, I sprinkled on the rest of the bacon pieces.

Bacon Boy thought this cake was delicious. His girlfriend, not sure she would like the chocolate-bacon combination, ended up having two pieces. My husband thought the bacon flavor in the cake was subtle until I added the glaze with the extra bacon bits. He said those were the best bites. What we didn't finish, Bacon Boy took back to school him. The cake was very dark and dense--perfect with coffee.

Happy 21st Birthday, Bacon Boy!

 

Back in the Saddle with The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier

I have a confession to make. I judged a book by its cover. Considering I sell books for a living, this is not a good thing.

I refused for a very long time to even open Ree Drummond's first cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, because on the cover she is holding a $300 Le Creuset Dutch oven. An "accidental ranch wife" doesn't find herself on the prairie cooking out of anything this expensive! But then when I did open the cookbook, I loved it. I have recommended this book over and over as a wedding present or first cookbook for someone who is not really comfortable in the kitchen. By the time you have followed all the photographed steps for a recipe, your Cheese Grits will look and taste just like Ree's. 

So I have been happily anticipating the second volume: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier, which came out last month. I decided to jump right in and make the Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork. I love making pulled pork in the crockpot. I put the ingredients on, go to work, and come home to a fragrant dinner. This recipe could not have been any easier. 

• 2 onions, peeled & quartered
• 1 whole pork butt (it was on sale!)
• salt & pepper to taste
• one 11-ounce can of chipotles in adobe sauce
• two 12-ounce cans of Dr. pepper
• 4 tablespoons packed brown sugar

First, you put the quartered onions in the bottom of the crockpot. Then you put in the pork butt, layer on the rest of the ingredients, and pour the Dr. Pepper over the top. Cook for at least 6 hours on high, flipping the meat several times during the process. It makes your house smell like smokey-sweet, meaty goodness. Then you remove the meat, shred it with forks, and add it back to the juices until ready to serve. 

This pulled pork was fabulous! Sweet with lots of heat. Too much heat, in fact, for my husband. I went back and fished out the chipotles, which had stayed surprising whole, so he wouldn't get them in a mouthful, and he liked the pork much better. If you aren't a fan of really spicy food, I would suggest either using half the can of chipotles, or seeding them first before adding them to the crockpot. 

The other thing I love about making pulled pork in the crockpot? All the leftovers. Ree has great suggestions at the end of the recipe about what to do with the leftovers, and we tried several of them. After eating the meat on buns with crunchy dill pickles, we made nachos, and used the meat as a pizza topping. I dug out a package of wonton wrappers, and made another version of my baked wonton cups with the pulled pork and mozzarella cheese. I also froze some of it for sandwich filling for dinner on another busy day.

I look forward to trying other recipes in this new cookbook. As always, Ree's photographs are meticulous and stunning. I know how long it takes me to set up and get one photo. Each recipe in Food from My Frontier has at least nine or ten photos. I worry about the Drummond children. I imagine them, pining away in the background, waiting for the photos to be snapped, starting to whine--just a little--"Can we eat yet?" Next time Bacon Boy is home, I'm making the Ranch-Style Chicken--yummy grilled, marinated chicken breasts topped with crispy bacon and cheddar cheese. But I'll only take one or two pictures!

What's New: Yumnuts

Everyone is talking about nuts these days. Nuts help reduce your chances of having a heart attack. They help with fat loss, and help you build muscle. They boost brain power with their dose of omega-3 fatty acids, and are a great source of protein. I grew up in a house where we ate nuts a lot. My father loved cracking pecans and hazelnuts for us to eat out of hand. My mother served walnuts inside sliced dates. And there was always a bowl of mixed nuts on the table at cocktail parties, not to mention pecan pie at Thanksgiving--although maybe those last two aren't the most nutritious way to snack on nuts.

I have come to eat nuts--almonds--every day as my mid-morning snack with fruit. Right now I am enjoying clementines because they are plentiful and go well with almonds, as do apples. My husband snacks on walnuts and cashews every day. But the big thing right now is flavored nuts. Why eat plain almonds when you can eat flavored ones? I understand this--I love butter toffee peanuts and peanut brittle, but again those work against the "nuts are healthy" ideal. Enter Yumnuts.

Yumnuts is a company that flavor-roasts almonds and cashews in a variety of flavors. Most processed nuts are roasted at high temperatures that degrade the valuable oils in the nuts, making them less healthy. Yumnuts roasts nuts at a much lower temperature, making them flavorful AND healthy. 

Yumnuts sells 5.75 ounce bags in a four-pack. I ordered the version that let's you chose the flavors you want to try. I got: Touch of Honey Cashews, and three almond flavors--Dark Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Ginger Orange. I am not a big fan of cashews, but the Touch of Honey were fabulous. The additional honey really brought out the nuts inherent sweetness during the roasting process. My husband motored right through them.

I parcelled out the almonds into snack-size bags, and enjoyed them over the next several weeks. The Dark Chocolate had the flavor of a perfectly roasted almond with a chocolate finish--great with coffee. The Cinnamon were roasted with cinnamon and allspice to give them a wonderfully spicy flavor--these were my favorite of the three. I loved the Ginger Orange. These almonds were my favorite snack with clementines, but I have become a little bit obsessed with ginger lately, and I thought the nuts had great orange flavor, but needed more ginger.

The four-pack sells for $19.96 which is $4.99 a pouch for six servings. That is more than you pay for the flavored nuts you can find at your local grocery, but the flavor is so much better, Yumnuts are worth it. You can also return the pouches the nuts come in, and Yumnuts will recycle them and give you reward points to use toward Yumnuts gear. I love my reusable shopping bag!

So take a look at Yumnuts: http://yumnutsnaturals.com/products.html for Nature's perfect snack. I think I will have to try the Roasted Coconut Cashews next--don't tell my husband!

New in the Kitchen: Cuisinart Blend and Cook Soupmaker

I haven't had a blender I've liked since 1982. That's the year I moved into my first apartment. I was trying to furnish a tiny hallway kitchen (you walked through it to get to the bedroom from the living room) with finds from second-hand stores. The kitchen had a tiny white, Easy Bake Oven and stove--the electric burners on top were so close, if I used more than one pot at a time, their sides touched. The oven was large enough to slide in a frozen pizza. The counter tops were a deep, bright orange. Keep-you-awake-in-the-dark orange. 

I went to Goodwill, and found a chrome toaster. It popped the toast straight up into the air, making every breakfast a rousing game of catch. When I got married three years later, I convinced my husband that this toaster was more fun than his Sunbeam that simply toasted the bread and popped it up. We spent years catching the toast until one day my chrome beauty fell from the counter to its death. We advanced to buying Cadillac toasters after that. the one we have now takes up one end of the kitchen counter with its long wide double-slots that can toast bagels or baguette slices. We eat a lot of toast in our house because my husband considers it to be a food group. Like ice cream and pizza.

At Goodwill I also found a great blend blender for my apartment. It was a study Waring with a glass jar that had originally been a very expensive kitchen tool. I got it for $7, and was told by the nice lady behind the counter that they guaranteed it to work for seven days. There was just one problem with the blender. It was pink. The base was pink. The lid was pink. It looked lovely on my orange counter top. I took to sleeping with my bedroom door closed because otherwise I could hear the pink warring with the orange in the dark. 

What I loved about the Waring was that it had a six-horsepower motor, and could make a smoothie out of concrete. I perfected a recipe for frozen strawberry margaritas--the perfect summertime drink in my unairconditioned apartment. I loved that blender.

Then I got married, and we got a lovely blender for a wedding present. It was white, and had a plastic carafe and could muster just enough power to blend milkshakes out of partially defrosted ice cream and milk. The plastic carafe quickly got scratched and cloudy. The strawberry margaritas always had chunks of frozen strawberry in them. I hated it. My father-in-law, a man who knows his kitchen appliances, promised to buy me another glass-carafed blender. Instead, I got plastic blender #2 which had more blending force than the first plastic blender but not by much. I stopped using it when the bottom blade assembly fused to the carafe, and I could no longer get it apart to clean it thoroughly.

Then last fall I started to see commercials on the cooking channels for the Cuisinart Blend and Stir Soupmaker. I loved the idea of being able to cook in a blender--I love soup, but it tends to be something I don't make from scratch. I don't eat it out of cans either because of the high salt content. Canned soup just doesn't taste good to me. I watched and waited. Sure enough right after Thanksgiving Williams Sonoma had the soupmaker on sale, AND had four days where there was no shipping charge on orders. I sent an email hint to Santa at the North Pole, and sure enough, on Christmas morning there was the Soupmaker under the Christmas tree.

I have to confess, with all the joys of working retail during the holiday season, it was the end of January before I even got my new soupmaker out of the box. I managed to get it assembled and on the counter without too much trouble. It is big, and takes up a good chunk of counter space. And it matches all my other black counter top appliances. The soupmaker comes with a small recipe book, and I decided to try the recipe for cauliflower cheese soup first. 

I based this soup on the Lightened Broccoli and Potato Soup in the recipe booklet, using cauliflower because I didn't have any broccoli. I put the following in the blender jar:

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• dash of salt
• dash of pepper
• 1 medium potato, peeled and cubed
• 3/4 pound cauliflower, cut into roughly 3/4 inch pieces

Then I put the lid on the jar and set it to 10 minutes on High. Once the broth started to heat up, I saw that the cauliflower wasn't covered all the way, and I added about a half a cup more.

In a few minutes the broth inside the blender jar started to boil. Then I hit the "Stir" button for about 15 seconds to start to move the ingredients around in the broth. At the end of the 10 minutes, the liquid was at a rolling boil, and the glass of the blender jar was hot to the touch.

The blender timer went off after 10 minutes, and I reset it to 30 minutes on medium. Periodically during this time, I stirred the soup  ingredients around. The blades at the bottom of the blender are extremely sharp, but on "stir" the speed is low enough so that the mixture moves, but isn't pureed. 

When the timer went off at the end of the 30 minutes, I tasted the mixture. The cauliflower wasn't cooked all the way through yet, so I set it for another 10 minutes on Medium. Then I added 2 ounces of grated sharp cheddar, and blended the soup on Speed 1 until it was smooth and creamy. I poured the soup into bowls, and sprinkled it with some green and red pepper flakes that I had made from my own dehydrated garden peppers from last summer. My husband and I love these pepper flakes, and sprinkle them on everything short of ice cream.

 This recipe made four very generous servings of soup. We would have had two meals out of it, but we ate it all. With some crackers. It was a lot of soup. And it was delicious.

What I liked about this soup was that once I had chopped everything and put it in the blender, I could do things in other rooms of the house, stirring the soup periodically until it was done. I was very careful the first time to chop all the vegetables uniformly, but as the blender stirs, it continues to chop the pieces so now I am not as careful to have all the pieces small and uniform. I whack up the veggies, onion, and garlic, throw it in the blender, add broth to cover, and let it go. Sometimes I add sour cream wit the cheese at the end. Sometimes I don't add the cheese at all. This is so easy we have been eating soup twice a week, less than an hour from start to bowl.

I wanted some soup to freeze, so I made the recipe in the booklet for Carrot and Ginger Soup--delicious! (My husband doesn't like carrot soup.) And wonderful to take to work with a sandwich.

For most of these creamy vegetable soups, I have found that we like the consistency better when I add the potato. The soup is lighter because the potato makes the soup creamy without being cream. The best soup so far has been a potato cheddar with crispy bacon bits added right before serving. No leftovers again. For clean up, I fill the blender jar halfway, add a little dish soap, and blend it clean. The blender does come with a brush for cleaning which is very helpful for the blades--they are very sharp!

$199 is expensive for a blender. Not so expensive for a soupmaker that I am using twice a week. It makes great smoothies too. Next I will have to try and find that strawberry margarita recipe again!

New Year, New Food: Barbari Bread & Persian Potato Chicken Salad

My friend Rebekah is married to a tall, dark, handsome Iranian. Over the years I have worked with her, she has learned to cook a number of Iranian dishes. One time she brought a dish into share (we have a little lunch group, low-cal, where some of us occasionally make lunch and bring it in to share). I have to confess that I don't remember what Rebekah made for lunch that day. I only remember the bread she brought. It was a wonderful Iranian flatbread called Barbari. Rebekah had brought it to share because this flatbread is fat free--a plus for a lo-cal lunch. After we had all eaten, there was flatbread leftover. Several pieces. I ate it all. Toasted, it was heavenly. A nice, light brown flatbread topped with sesame seeds. Toasted. Maybe I put some butter on it after I toasted it. Maybe it wasn't fat free then.

Anyway, it's not a bread Rebekah buys locally. Friends of hers go to Chicago to shop the  Middle Eastern food stores there and bring things back. Like the Barabari. So on the first day of this new year, Rebekah brought me an entire package of Barbari. Two and a half feet of it! As I was carrying it gingerly out of work later, Ryan (you know, the one who loves the pineapple angel food cake) asked, "Is that a skateboard made of bread?" It certainly was large enough. So I took my flat of bread home, and thought about what to make with it. 

So I noodled around on the web looking for a salad that might be served with this Iranian flatbread, and came up with Salad Olivieh. Supposedly Russian in origin, it is served throughout the Middle East. The salad is a cross between chicken and potato salad. I like chicken salad, and I like potato salad, but I had never thought of combining them. So I continued to examine recipes and soon realized that there was no way I could follow a traditional recipe for Salad Olivieh, which calls for anywhere from two to three CUPS of mayonnaise, and still serve it to the lo-cal lunch group. So, what follows in the recipe I created. It is based on a traditional Salad Olivieh, but features lower calorie ingredients.

Persian Potato Chicken Salad

• 2 chicken breasts
• 3 small, plain baked potatoes
• 5 carrots

The recipe I was very roughly following called for 2 cups of shredded chicken. You could buy a roasted chicken and use the meat from that. But since I was starting from scratch, I roasted two whole chicken breasts with the potatoes and carrots. Then I chilled them, got rid of any residual chicken fat, and cubed the potatoes, chicken, and potatoes. I didn't shred the chicken because I was cubing everything else, and did the chicken that way too. Not traditional.

In a bowl, to the above ingredients, add:

• 3 hard-boiled eggs, also chilled and cubed
• 1 cup frozen peas (you could also use a frozen peas and carrot mix)
• 1/2 cup sweet pickles, diced

The traditional recipe calls for a 19-ounce jar of Persian pickles. I have never eaten a Persian pickle, and have no idea what their flavor is like. I substituted gherkins because I had them in the fridge. I put in only half a cup because I didn't want them to overwhelm the flavor of the other ingredients. Again not traditional.

For the dressing: 

• 1 cup fat-free mayo 
• 1 tablespoon honey mustard
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice

Whisk all of the above ingredients in a bowl, and then gently stir the mixture into the other ingredients. As I mentioned the more traditional recipes all call for lots  of regular mayonnaise. They also use more olive oil, and lemon juice. I used less olive oil, lime juice instead of lemon (personal preference), and fat free mayo. VERY not traditional. This was plenty of dressing for my tastes.

I took the salad into the lunch group, and served it with toasted pieces of the Barbari Bread. Rebekah said it was delicious, but had I not told her it was my version of the Persian chicken and potato salad, she never would have known. Her husband's family always shreds the chicken, uses the correct pickles, and uses a LOT of mayonnaise. I was going to take a picture of the other members of the lo-cal lunch group enjoying the salad and Barbari, but by the time I remembered to get out my camera, their plates were clean.

I will certainly make this salad again. But I may have to try and make the Barbari myself because I don't know when I'll get more. Thanks Rebekah!