Saffron snickerdoodles; marriage

The weekend we got married in New York was made memorable not only by our nuptials but by the sheer volume of amazing food we ate. Our favourite (measured by the number of repeat visits we made, anyways) was Blue Bottle Coffee; we stayed across the street from one and another makes an appearance in our beautiful photos. The drip coffee was phenomenal but it was the cookies that really won me over, especially the saffron snickerdoodles.

photo by the formidably talented Kateryn Silva, obvs

We’ve been married for over six months now, and it’s becoming normal to call each other husband and wife (but I still love partner best). My finger feels weird without my ring rather than with; the thin strip of gold now boasts some new scratches besides all the ones I put there on purpose. Watching friends plan their weddings has convinced us that we made the right decision, and every time I hear this song I smile because it was stuck in my head all that day.

Those cookies were also stuck in my head one day recently when I decided to google them, and it turns out that the recipe had been printed not only in the Blue Bottle Coffee cookbook, but on one of my very favourite recipe blogs less than two weeks before we wed. So I bookmarked them, forgot, remembered, had brunch instead, and finally made them tonight, the smell of New York in October filling our apartment while I sat with my husband and enjoyed being in our tiny family.

Gin o’clock

they had me at “team of foragers”

Summertime is gin and tonic time, as far as I’m concerned. Gin always seems to have a bad rap, probably because we all made the mistake of sampling our parents’ dusty bottles of Beefeater as teenagers, but a good quality, herby gin is truly delicious.

I picked up this Islay gin at the LCBO a few weeks ago, and it’s great. I waffled for a good 10 minutes about whether to stick with my beloved Hendrick’s or try this new one out, but ultimately went with the unknown because I got more air miles for it.

Summer in a glass

• 1 part gin
• 4 parts tonic water
• lime
• ice

Mix in a glass and/or mason jar, if you’re a hipster like me and all your cups are dirty. Sip and pretend you’re the queen of England.

If you want to get fancy, which sometimes I do, feel free to muddle some mint in there. Another delicious alternative is ginger syrup and soda water in place of the tonic.

Whole wheat chocolate coffee cupcakes

One of my main go-to sites for amazing recipes is Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks. I’m a constant reducer when I’m baking – taking out a 1/4 cup of sugar, swapping yogurt for oil, whole wheat for white flour. I find that, for daily baked snacks in my lunch, I don’t like things too sweet. But with Heidi’s recipes, I don’t have to take things out – she’s already healthed up (not a word, I know) the snacks, and I can always trust that her recipes are delicious.

These cupcakes (which should be a bundt cake, but I’m still on the hunt for the perfect pan) were no exception. Super moist, with a spongy texture and a just-shy-of-bitter dark chocolate flavour, under a swipe of dark cocoa icing sprinkled with fleur de sel.

But they’re whole wheat, so I can have 3 in one day, right? Right.

Link Love

I don’t do these very often, because I’m lazy, but to make up for my extended absence I thought I’d share some recent faves with you.

we loved this turquoise sidebar at the Hintonburg Public House

Ask a Manager has great career advice.

This op-ed in the NYT is a great read.

A recipe for battenburg cake!

What a great summer haircut.

Loving this sleeveless blouse.

Topo Designs is killing it with this blanket!

Creamy Hummus

When it comes to purchasing food, I tend to stick to extremes. I don’t mind spending a premium for good ingredients, because I know they taste better; I’d rather only buy local free-range meat and just eat meat less often (although there are lots of other reasons to do so besides cost!), and I will definitely shell out for real vanilla extract as opposed to vanillin.

On the other extreme, though, I hate spending money on prepared foods, because the mark-up is so high, and I can often do better myself. Why spend $8 on a fancy jar of tomato sauce when I can just buy some cheap tomatoes at the market and make a better one myself? Sure, there’s the cost of my labour, but when it’s something I enjoy, I don’t mind the time.

The one prepared food that I do sometimes splurge on, however guiltily, is hummus. I know – it’s dead easy, takes no time (if you buy canned beans, like a sucker, that is), and the ingredients are always on hand (if you keep industrial-sized jars of tahini on hand like we do, at least). But store-bought hummus is soooo smooth – mine always turned out a bit grainy, which was always a bit disappointing.

No more, my friends. I found this recipe over at Natural Noshing, and it easily matches store hummus in smoothness, without any of those weird unpronounceable binder ingredients (how the hell do you say xanthan, anyways?).

The one thing I changed (and obnoxiously commented on, because I’m incapable of keeping my business to myself) is that you shouldn’t soak or cook any pulses in baking soda, because it destroys the thiamin (aka vitamin B) present in them, and you don’t want beriberi, do you?

Creamy Hummus

• 2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained (I always cook mine from dried because I’m cheap frugal, but feel free to use canned if you’re short on time)
• 1/3 cup tahini
• juice of 2 lemons
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp cumin
• ground pepper to taste
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup water or more

Blend.

Cookie Fiasco

In 2008, the New York Times published a 2-page ode to the chocolate chip cookie, as well as the ultimate recipe – the culmination of tips from some of the biggest names in the cookie biz.  I made that recipe, and they were phenomenal – huge, thin, chewy, and indulgently sweet, but with a wonderful contrast from the sea salt sprinkled on top.  They were definitely my favourite chocolate chip cookie ever.

image from NYT

But… I’m an oatmeal raisin girl at heart, and so the chocolate chip cookies remained a fond memory until recently, when I had a craving.  I pulled up the recipe online, whipped up a batch, and – disaster.

Okay, by disaster, I mean these things still taste great – they’re COOKIES, for pete’s sake.  But they didn’t spread.  Everyone knows that the best texture for a cookie is chewy, and they have to be just the right thickness to be chewy – too thin and they’re crispy (and crumbly); too thick and they’re just cake in disguise.

These cookies aren’t bad, but they’re edging into cakey territory.  It could be because I made them a tad small, but that shouldn’t have prevented them from spreading, should it?  I also didn’t use the two different kinds of flour, but I know that I didn’t the first time either, so I don’t think that’s it.  The only other variable is that I used a scraping of vanilla bean instead of extract, but I can’t imagine that 2 teaspoons of liquid would cause 36 cookies to drastically change shape.

Obviously, there’s only one solution – make the cookies again next week.  It’s a big sacrifice, I know, but I do it in the name of science.

Melting Snow and Maple Scones

Fresh of the heels of my complaining-that-it’s-still-winter post, I can’t help but feel a little silly with this post – a springtime recipe for maple scones from 101 Cookbooks.  Sure, I’m pretty jealous that some places have seen all their snow disappear already (if they had any), and I’m always a bit envious that strawberries, morels, asparagus, and pea shoots appear on Tastespotting months before they show up at the markets, but I have you all beat on the best thing in the world: maple syrup.

My little cousin got a head start in life, or at least knowing when to check your buckets for sap

You see, this amber elixir hails from my region of Canada – 75% of the world’s production of maple syrup is in Quebec, which I live right beside.  I’ve heard Americans claim that they produce some too, but that’s a baldfaced lie* – maple syrup is all we have going for us in terms of cultural food products, and we’re keeping it!

Maple syrup is what Canadians get in exchange for suffering through winter.  When I was a sad, deprived child, my family bought table syrup (such as Aunt Jemima, but probably no-name knowing my family’s budget) and thinking about what I missed in my childhood makes me want to cry.  If you’ve never had real maple syrup (hint: it comes in a can or a glass jar, is expensive, and always has cute pictures of people quaintly harvesting it on the label), your life is meaningless.  It tastes like sweet, earthy, tree-y, springtime goodness.

Sap runs when it’s warm during the day and cold at night.  I don’t know why; maybe the trees are crying because they know that soon, squirrels and woodpeckers will be making holes in them.  But before those forest creatures can get started, humans come along and tap the trees, basically bleeding them out into buckets.  Then we boil the shit out of it until it’s reduced to about 1/70th of it’s volume, and voila!  pancake topper, coffee sweetener, salmon glazer, straight-off-the-spoon fattener.  Maple syrup does it all.

Sick Day Beans

Don’t worry, you don’t actually need to be sick (or otherwise at home all day) to make these.  But since I am home sick, and it is November, I thought I would make a batch.  This is a mash-up of recipes – Anita Stewart’s amazing From Our Mother’s Kitchens (which is probably my most-used cookbook, especially in winter) with a few tweaks and ideas from Heidi Swanson’s recipe for Berry Beer Baked Beans over on 101 Cookbooks (although sadly, I have never tried adding berries).

2 cups dried white beans, soaked for a few hours
1 onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons molasses
6 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons dijon mustard (or dry mustard)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 – 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped (I used nearly 2, and it was drink-a-glass-of-milk-along-with-dinner spicy!)
1 teaspoon cornstarch
water or beer, alone or in some combination

Simmer the beans in a pot of water for about an hour, until fairly tender (but not mushy).

Preheat oven to 350F. Heat a cast iron dutch oven on the stovetop, and saute the onion and garlic in a tablespoon or so of bacon fat or oil (if you don’t have obscene amounts of bacon fat lurking in your fridge waiting to be made into shortbread cookies, that is). When they’re beginning to brown, turn off the element, add all the ingredients except the cornstarch to the dutch oven, and place in oven, uncovered. Cook for an hour or so, stirring occasionally and adding water if necessary.

Mix cornstarch with 1/4 cup of water, and add this mixture to the beans. This is a good time to check the seasoning. Top up with water if needed, and continue baking for as long as you’d like, keeping with the stirring and the water. The longer they cook, the more the flavours will blend and develop, but if it’s 7pm and you and your partner are both starving, then another 10 minutes or so is totally fine.

Serve with salad and good bread.

I made it through a post about beans without any fart jokes… amazing.

 

 

Pumpkin Recipe Roundup

The last few weeks of our CSA have inundated us with squash – three beautiful delicates (which we’ve already eaten, sadly), orange pumpkins, acorn squashes, something that looks to be a cross between the two (shaped like a pumpkin and green-and-yellow striped!) and a huge butternut.

Now, I love squash, but this is a lot for two people!  So far, we’ve made soup, pie, risotto, and pumpkin butter, but there are still about 10 squashes left.  So I thought I’d compile a list of yummy-sounding recipes from tastespotting…

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from King Arthur Flour… I made these last year and they were awesome.  I’ll definitely  be doing them again!  Last time I didn’t have dried cranberries on hand but I’ll be sure to buy some before I try it again.  I also used some pumpkin butter that I had on hand instead of the packaged filling the recipe calls for, and made a maple glaze for the tops instead of plain icing.  Soo good!

Pumpkin bread, of course, has to be on the menu.  I’m a huge fan of quick breads – obviously because they’re easy to throw together on a weeknight, and also because they’re essentially a form of cake that, for some reason, has been sanctioned for consumption at any time of day.  If you say you’re having pumpkin cake for breakfast, eyebrows will raise.  But pumpkin bread? That, my friends, is totally acceptable…. because it’s bread, and bread is healthy, right?

Of course, pumpkin and  squash are so versatile that it can be savoury as well as sweet, and so this pasta with pumpkin sauce from Circle B Kitchen is definitely going on the list.  Goat cheese?  Sage?  Red pepper flakes?  This sounds like it was made for me!

Pumpkin scones are something I’ve been meaning to make for a while… like most of the recipes online, this one is attempting to mimic the ones from Starbucks (with good reason – those things are addictive!).

I tried to make baked oatmeal once, and ended up throwing it on the stovetop in exasperation after over an hour in the oven failed to reduce the liquid at all.  This recipe for baked pumpkin apple oatmeal sounds good enough to consider another attempt, though.

This sounds like it will get me started on all that pumpkin.  Of course, we often just chop one in half, bake it, and eat it as a side dish, but sometimes it’s nice to make something a bit more complex.  I’ll probably roast a few at a time and freeze the puree to pull out and use in these recipes as I need it.  Yum!  Now I just need to find a ton of recipes for our beets, carrots, potatoes, and turnips…

Somebody’s Grandmother’s Date Squares, Updated

<em></em>I was a picky eater as a child – I mean, <em>really</em> picky.  The list of things I wouldn’t touch included most vegetables, anything creamy (I didn’t eat yogurt until my second year of university – now I make my own), anything weird-sounding, and definitely anything that looked remotely unappetizing.
<img src=”http://meaghanking.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/dsc_00071.jpg&#8221; alt=”DSC_0007″ title=”DSC_0007″ width=”499″ height=”334″ />

Luckily for me (and for people feeding me), there’s now hardly anything I won’t eat.  Even if I don’t like something, it’s usually because of the preparation method – bok choi is great chopped up fine in salads, but please don’t serve me a whole leaf of it swimming in broth.

But I lament being so fastidious for so many years, because of the pure volume of delicious food I missed out on.  I have 20 years’ worth of yogurt to catch up on, for example.  Tomatoes?  18 summers of sweet, ruby-fleshed wonders, gone forever.  Luckily, I recently had the opportunity to make up for a bit of the 16 years of date squares I missed out on.

Eric and I were talking about awesome “grandma” desserts.  I missed out on these, my grandmother being of the “why make it when it comes pre-packaged?” school, but he has fond memories of banana cream pie, gumdrop bread, and gooey date squares from his grandma’s kitchen.

This recipe is adapted from Anita Stewart’s amazing <em>From Our Mother’s Kitchens</em>, which is full of the kind of recipes that surely contributed to the term “stick to your ribs.”  I added about a tablespoon of toasted and finely ground spices: a ras el hanout blend, as well as an inch of cinnamon stick and some cloves, green cardamom, and nutmeg.  To be honest, I would eat spices plain if it were socially acceptable, but I found that the fragrant, earthy spice tones complimented the dates fantastically.  The crumbly oat topping was phenom – perfectly sweet, with big clumps of oats.

I’m proud to say that I’m well on my way to, one day, being someone’s grandmother that makes delectable date squares.

<strong>Date Squares</strong><em>adapted from Anita Stewart</em>makes about 24 bars

Filling:2 cups chopped pitted dates (I used dried; you could definitely use fresh)

1 cup water

1/2 cup brown sugar

zest and rind of one orange (I used lemon zest and a splash of spiced rum, as oranges are extra out-of-season, but orange water would also be great)MK -

1-2 tablespoons toasted and ground ras el hanout spice mix, or a mix of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, lavender, and hibiscus

Oat topping:

2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2/3 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 3/4 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup brown sugarMK -

1/2 tsp salt
<strong>Directions</strong>:

In a saucepan, bring filling ingredients to a boil; simmer until water is all absorbed, smushing dates against the side of the pan until smooth.
For crust:

In a bowl, stir flours, oats, baking soda, and salt together.  Cream butter and sugar together; mix in flour mixture until crumbly and moist.  Press 2/3 of mixture into a lightly greased  9×9 baking pan.

Spread date filling evenly over crust; crumble remaining oat mixture on top.  Bake in a 375f oven for 25-30 minutes, or until edges turn golden brown.  Let cool for as long as you can stand (10 minutes or so) before cutting.