Tag Archives: vegetarian

Applesauce Brownies

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Thank you Trenton Farmers’ Market.

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Where else can you buy a bag of apples for $6 the day before Thanksgiving?

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There were also 55 apples in the bag, but who’s counting.

It took me exactly 30 minutes to peel the 55 apples, which means I peeled about 1.8 apples/minute, but again, numbers.

What is important is that with this many apples, you can make a fair amount of applesauce.

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How much applesauce, you might ask? Ah yes, another number!

Several numbers actually. By the time I had finished making the applesauce, it was time to eat Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house. So I borrowed a tape measure from my mom and made a few quick measurements. And then a week later, I did the calculations, and made some new art math.

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Yes, that’s right. I made a gallon and a half of applesauce.

The great thing about applesauce, though, is that you don’t have to make 194 ounces to enjoy it. You can make as much or as little as you like, it’s really easy to make (one ingredient!), and it tastes so good and naturally sweet. If you’ve never made it, give it a try – here’s the recipe.

Applesauce

  • 10 apples (or more)
  • (Optional) 1/4 cup apple cider or water
  • (Optional) Cinnamon
  1. Peel the apples
  2. Chop the apples into pieces (discard the cores)
  3. (Optional) Add the apple cider or water to a pot
  4. Add the chopped apples to the pot and cook over low-medium heat, stirring occasionally
  5. Cook until the applesauce is the desired consistency (smooth, chunky, or in between)
  6. (Optional) Add a little cinnamon

As the apples heat up, they become soft and release some of their juices. Then they do all the work  themselves and cook themselves into applesauce. If you want to speed things up, you could add a little apple cider or water at the beginning, and you could also cook them covered for a bit. Towards the end, you could use a potato masher too, if what you want is smoother applesauce more quickly.

Whatever you do, make sure to stir the apples occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. There’s nothing like having to use a second or third pot on a single batch of applesauce, and then having to do a multiple-pot-cleaning (scrubbing) afterwards. I mean, hypothetically speaking of course 🙂 My last note is that all types of apples are good to use. For the sweetest, richest applesauce flavor, I’ll use several different types of apples together.

But what about the brownies? I thought there were going to be brownies! Applesauce Brownies!! And while we’re on the topic, what is an Applesauce Brownie???

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Yes, exactly! I was wondering what an Applesauce Brownie is too, so I made some.

I’d actually been wondering this for a while, as I remember having eaten them once as a kid and having been amazed that they tasted like brownies despite having applesauce in them. Lucky for me, I now had one of the main ingredients on hand, and in abundance. So into the kitchen I went: Curiosity plus surplus equals creation.

I looked up a brownie recipe in a printed cookbook, searched for applesauce brownie recipes online, and then on the advice that applesauce is a big ingredient in vegan baking, I searched for vegan applesauce brownies too.

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Applesauce brownie batter, Version one

The vegan suggestion, combined with my further searching, got me thinking. What is the fewest number of ingredients I could use and still end up with brownies? The Google auto-fill in the search bar was pointing me in this direction too, listing among other things the following:

  • Baking substitute applesauce for eggs
  • Baking substitute applesauce for butter
  • Baking substitute applesauce for oil

Could applesauce be that versatile? And in the same recipe??

I thought, Let’s find out! The short answer to both questions is yes. The long answer is it took me two tries to come up with a recipe that I liked. For the first version, I used the following: applesauce, cocoa powder, salt, sugar, vanilla, and flour. It turned out alright, but it also came out a little flat, literally, and had an interesting chocolately, apple tangy flavor.

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Version one (with b/g apples from a different purchase)

When making version two, I included the three ingredients I figured had been missing in version one: baking powder, baking soda, and chocolate. And the result?

So good.
So rich.
So chocolatey.

Here’s the recipe 🙂

Applesauce Brownies

  • 1 1/2 cups applesauce
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 4 oz bittersweet chocolate
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  1. Mix the applesauce, sugar, and vanilla
  2. Melt the chocolate, and add it to the applesauce mixture
  3. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, cocoa powder, baking powder, and baking soda
  4. Add the flour mixture to the applesauce mixture, and mix
  5. Lightly oil an 8″ x 8″ baking dish
  6. Add the batter to the baking dish
  7. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-45 minutes
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Love that chocolate melting

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And love that final chocolate brownie product

It’s not easy to predict the future, but I do believe mine will include the following: additional apple purchases, more applesauce making, and now also vegan applesauce brownie baking.

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And if you want, you can even have them side by side.

Thank you applesauce.

Espresso Lemon Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

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Espresso Lemon Chocolate Chip Banana Bread!

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Or as I like to call it lately, my housewarming gift. In the past month or so, I’ve made it three times, each time for a party. I’m not a big drinker, but I do like making and bringing food. And that food being dessert. And eating it 🙂

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I’m actually eating a few chocolate chips right now as my dessert. (Thanks, Dad.) The chocolate chips above and the ones that I’m having now are also leftovers from last spring when I made chocolate covered matzoh (also good). The chips were on sale, and I, well, may have bought several bags. They still taste good though.

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It also wouldn’t be Espresso Lemon Chocolate Chip Banana Bread without the lemon! We need the zest!! Plus, saying four rather than five words before getting to “Bread” would also not be as fun.

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And finally there’s the espresso powder. I’m currently working on a 11-ounce bag that still has the majority of its ounces despite a printed ‘best by’ date that’s best gone by. But hey, I’m not a big (coffee) drinker. I do like dessert though. And eating it 🙂

And with that, here’s the recipe!

Espresso Lemon Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 3/4 stick of butter
  • Zest from one lemon
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 ripe bananas
  • 1 cup chocolate chips
  • 1/2 Tbsp espresso powder

Steps

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl
  2. Mix the sugar, butter, lemon zest, eggs, and bananas in another bowl (I used a handheld electronic mixer for this step; I also softened and cut the butter into pieces and cut the banana into pieces first)
  3. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture, and mix until smooth
  4. Add the chocolate chips and espresso powder, and mix them in
  5. Pour the mixture into a greased loaf pan
  6. Bake for about an hour at 375 degrees

(Adapted from the Banana Bread Cockaigne recipe in The Joy of Cooking. I changed a few measurements and also made the coffee and chocolate additions :))

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So far the feedback’s been very positive, as it also was a few months ago when an espresso powder and frozen blueberry brainstorm resulted in the similarly titled, Espresso Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake, which itself followed from the equally if not more awesome, Lemon Chocolate Chip Pound Cake.

The espresso powder definitely gives it something extra. It’s hard to place – sort of like a hearty, dense smoky sensation that doesn’t at the same time give it a smoky flavor. If you have two pans, make a double recipe with the espresso powder in one, and see what you think!

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And there it is, Espresso Lemon Chocolate Chip Banana Bread!

Yum!

Now to eat a few more chocolate chips 🙂

Tofu Cacciatore

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Hi, my name is Dave, and I have something to say.

Tofu Cacciatore.

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Tofu cacciatore, in a pita pocket

Actually that’s only part of what what I have to say. As is often the case, there’s the food, the story, and the more of the story.

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The food and the story began a little over two weeks ago. I was trying to figure out what to make for the day-before-Valentine’s-Day potluck party that my friends were having. I wanted to make something new and different, but lacking full inspiration, I decided to go with Tofurky Sloppy Joes (in pitas with mozzarella). The night before the potluck, I got everything together and made it. When I tasted it, it was good, but it didn’t seem like anything special. It seemed like…Tofurky with homemade tomato sauce. It was done though, and ready to go.

I still had about an hour before I was going to go to sleep, so I started up another cooking project. Having just baked some tofu, I decided to try making tofu cacciatore, i.e., to try making something from the list I keep of new things to try, test out, refine, perfect, and then, after several tests, write about and finally share in their beautiful, glittering, and ‘Let’s make this right away because it’s ridiculously good’ final perfect form. That was the plan. But you know how plans can be – it’s not bad to have them (in fact it’s often good have them), but sometimes they don’t go…as planned. The key is to be open to adapting to change along the way.

The tofu cacciatore, on attempt #1, was actually pretty good. I wasn’t about to bring it to the party though because I’d made it only once. I didn’t even take notes or pictures along the way, as I figured I’d make it several more times before sharing it.

But come the next day, and the approach of the potluck hour, I was starting to feel a familiar struggle rising up, of, What should I do… Should I bring the Sloppy Joes, as already prepared and as planned? Or should I bring this other thing I happened to have, Tofu Cacciatore, which admittedly tastes better but isn’t perfect (isn’t what I imagined perfect would be, and not what I planned)? I stood there for 5-10 minutes, knowing that I had to choose and start heating one of them up. And then, without thinking too much, came a moment of clarity:

Bring the one you like more, the one you think other people will like more, the one that’s a little different, the one that’s more unique, the one that’s more you, the one that well it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect because right now, in the moment, it’s pretty good, good enough, and more than good enough. It’s Tofu Cacciatore. What more is there to say?

So I brought the TC. 🙂

It’s great when a decision feels right. And people liked it too.

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Tofu Cacciatore

Ingredients

  • 1 lb firm tofu, cut into smaller pieces (about 1″ x 1/2″ x 1/2″)
  • 1 Tbsp each: olive oil, soy sauce, maple syrup, white wine vinegar
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil (in addition to the above)
  • 2 onions, chopped into small pieces
  • 1 Tbsp dried rosemary, diced
  • 1 Tbsp dried sage, diced
  • 2 peppers (any color), chopped roughly
  • 3 cloves of garlic, diced
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1 1/4 cups crushed tomatoes
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper

Steps

  1. Prepare and bake the tofu
    • Mix the olive oil, soy sauce, maple syrup, and white wine vinegar (1 Tbsp each) in a bowl
    • Add the tofu pieces, and mix to coat them in the marinade
    • Arrange the tofu pieces on a baking sheet
    • Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, flip the pieces, and then bake for another 15 minutes (30 minutes total)
    • Let the baked tofu cool for 5 minutes, and then chop roughly into smaller pieces
  2. Saute the onions and the herbs (rosemary and sage) in the olive oil (3 Tbsp) over medium heat until the onions are soft, about 20 minutes
  3. Add the peppers and garlic, and saute for another 10 minutes
  4. Add the broth and wine, and simmer for 10 minutes
  5. Add the baked tofu
  6. Add the crushed tomatoes, and simmer for 10 minutes
  7. Add whatever is left of the tofu marinade
  8. Add the salt and pepper

The first thing I love about this recipe is the baked tofu. Over the past few months, I’ve made a lot of it, and the above marinade/time/temp combo is a keeper. The way I’ve been making the tofu is quick too – cut it, coat it, place it, bake it. You can also use this baked tofu for stir fry or as a hot or cold snack by itself. If you want, you can also leave out the 1 Tbsp of white wine vinegar (to make it mildly sweet rather than mildly sweet-tart).

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In the marinade

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Out of the oven

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On the cutting board

A second part of the recipe that makes me smile is how, near the end, I add the extra marinade to the Tofu Cacciatore mix.

You might be saying, Uhh, soy sauce and maple syrup, in cacciatore???

The answer is, Yup! It’s only a small bit, and really, what else are you going to do with it 🙂

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If you have fresh herbs, they’re always good to use. I still have a lot of dried sage leaves from my garden (if anyone wants some, let me know!), so that’s what I used for the sage. Chopping the sage also came with a satisfying crunch-sound of the dried leaves folding under the knife and an equally satisfying, ever-so-slightly-delayed punch of potent sage aroma.

Since I hadn’t taken any pictures and didn’t remember all the quantities from the first time, I did end up making the recipe two more times a few days later.

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Peppers and garlic – Take 2

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Take 3

I didn’t bring any leftovers home from the potluck, but I did learn today that this version of Tofu Cacciatore also keeps for at least 12 days. (I may have, um, had the last of the Take 2 and 3 leftovers today. Shortly before taking the first photo above, the TC in a PP.)

Overall, it was a good recipe and experience. I modeled the Tofu Cacciatore recipe on the Chicken Cacciatore recipe that I used to make before I stopped cooking meat a few years ago, and that recipe was modeled in turn on the Joy of Cooking one. If there’s a TC 2.0 to in future, it might include the addition of more herbs (basil, oregano, and/or rosemary), flour (a browning and thickening ingredient from the past version), capers (also from the past), and mushrooms (maybe, maybe not; they’re not my favorite, but they are found in many a cacciatore recipe).

Admittedly, without the mushrooms, there’s no morel to the story 🙂 But, it does remain a story with food and more.

I’ve written before about letting go of trying to be and wanting things to be perfect – for instance, the reminder of how The reason is in the risotto – and there’s a bit of that reminder here too, with my new friend TC. Every reminder leads to a further shift in thinking, just like every day comes with something new to see, feel, think, and learn from. That was one of my thoughts as I was waking up today, along with the thought that it’s amazing that this post, what I’d be writing here, would be slightly different if I’d written it two weeks ago, one week ago, or even two days ago. Something new happens, is seen, and is felt all the time, and it’s a kitchen ripple. And I feel it. And just like the TC may change and evolve in the future, so too may I. Where we’re at now is good and right, and where we’ll be at later will be good too.

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In some ways, it feels like a repost.

And with food, it’s also a repast.

Knowing that everything builds over time, we can say too: every day that goes by is a new past.

And as we move forward, every day that we live in, and are a part of, is a new present.

New Potatoes

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It’s a new year, and it’s time for some new potatoes.

For a new recipe, that is,
With potatoes.
And apples.
And onions.

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Food pyramid

According to my notes, I actually made it for the first time in late December. I’ve been playing with it in January though, and let me tell you, it’s a good one to play with since it tastes really good. Sweet, salty, rich, and tart. Sometimes together, and sometimes one after the other. What’s the secret? The three title ingredients, and the white wine and all the rest.

Potato, Apple, and Onion Sauté and Bake

Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion – sliced
  • 3 potatoes – peeled, cut in half, and sliced
  • 2 apples – peeled, cored, and chopped and sliced
  • 1/4 cup white wine
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 Tbsp thyme
  • 2 Tbsp butter (optional)

Steps

  1. Sauté the onion in oil over medium heat until soft and slightly browned, about 15 minutes
  2. Add the rest of the ingredients – the potatoes, apples, wine, water, salt, thyme, and butter
  3. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to the frying pan
  4. Transfer to a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ baking dish
  5. Bake covered at 400 degrees for 20 minutes
  6. Bake uncovered for another 5-10 minutes, to slightly crisp the potatoes (optional)

I took some pictures and made a drawing along the way, too.

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Three potatoes, peeled and cut in half

Aka, Potato pinwheel.
Or, Spud-sun.

Or perhaps, Tater, Turtle?

Say what you may, but sometimes potatoes just gotta speak for themselves.

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Can you tell I just took a cartooning class?

But back to the recipe – yes, this is a good one, and easy. I sliced the potatoes and apples into relatively thin pieces (white potatoes and macouns, but you could use other ones) and used the wine that I had on hand (Pinot Grigio). You could skip the butter if you want to make it vegan – it tastes good with or without it – and you could also scale it up if you want to make more. The first two times I made it, I also used more olive oil (2 Tbsp one time, and 1 1/2 Tbsp the other time), but I found that 1 Tbsp also worked, so that’s what I included here with the recipe.

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Yes, that’s a baking sheet on top of a baking dish.

Poor man’s tin foil.
Rich man’s lid.

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The last step, after letting it cool for few minutes, is to summon the foundations of self-restraint and not eat it all right away.

Or, just go ahead and keep eating.

I’m practiced in both.

Invitation to Tomato Risotto

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You’re invited!

I hope you come, because it’s going to be worth it.

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Tomato risotto.

Crunchy. Soft. Sweet. Sour. Sweet. Intriguing. More please.

These are some of the initial adjectives and commands that come to mind whenever I make this. After you try it, you might find yourself adding some more. The last two times I made it, for the family picnic last summer and a Princeton tailgate last month, I was party to almost the exact same, honest-speaking exchange:

My cousin (last year) / A new friend (this year): “Wow, this is really good.”
Me: “I know, right!?”

Lucky for me was the day sometime during the summer of 2009 when I happened to borrow Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking by Claudia Roden from the public library. I tried a few recipes from it at the time, and they were all good, but the one that stood out was Tomato Risotto. I’ve taken the book out several times since – let’s just say that mark on page 87, opposite the tomato risotto picture, may or may not have been caused be me (a food bookmark is what you want to see in a cookbook anyway, right??) – and I was looking forward to seeing the familiar pages again after I’d decided to make the recipe again last month. When I went to get the book from the library, though, someone else had taken it out! I also couldn’t find the photocopy I’d made of the recipe, which I wanted to see to double check the amounts. So, to the computer I went, and a small donation to the internet commerce fund later, I became the owner of my very own kitchen copy.

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Simple, good design outside, and like recipes inside

Here’s how to get the party going.

Tomato Risotto

Ingredients

  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 2 onions, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, diced
  • 2 1/2 cups Arborio rice
  • 12 fresh ripe local tomatoes, diced (about 6 cups, including the liquid)
  • 1 1/2 cups white wine
  • 2 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 2 1/2 tsp sugar

Steps

  1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, medium heat.
  2. Add the onion and garlic, and saute until partially softened, about 10 minutes.
  3. Add the rice.
  4. Add the tomatoes.
  5. Add the wine.
  6. Simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the rice is mostly cooked (just a little crunchy), stirring occasionally.
  7. Add the salt, pepper, and sugar.

I love writing three-word steps.

The next step is to try not to eat too much of it before going to your picnic, potluck, or tailgate. I like it best either warm or at room temperature. If you think the recipe looks really easy – and it is – allow me to note the following also: the original recipe doesn’t include onions (I added them), and I doubled the recipe (why make less when you can make more). A few other small variations from the C.Roden original are the salt, pepper, and sugar quantities. I listed what I used this time, but as I’ve noted in the past, such as when making lyrical tomato sauce, how much to add is up to you.

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Two before shots

Yes, that’s how my table looked right before picking the 12 ripest tomatoes for the risotto.

These days, as in today, it’s looking more varicolored:

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Red and green and shades between,
The fruit picked and the plants stripped,
Some ready and some waiting,
A table of the frost’s creation.

Yes, last weekend New Jersey had its first frost, which means a few things: I picked all the tomatoes from my community garden plot ahead of time (red and green), and farmers around the state, and in other states, picked their last tomatoes for the season too.

There were still some tomatoes at the farmers’ market when I went this week, though, and when I asked a farmer friend about it, he said you should be able to still get tomatoes at the market for a week or two.

Which means, of course, tomato risotto! As in, it’s not too late. It’s there if you want it, a little summer wow to help bring in the fall.

Summer Roasting

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I write this from a place of sitting-sweating.

Labor Day has come and gone, but for those already missing summer, I have the answer: Summer Roasting.

To do it my way, there are five easy steps: 1) Stop at the local farm stand (Z Food Farm) on your way home, 2) Turn your oven on to 400 degrees, 3) Turn your air conditioner off, 4) Put the chopped vegetables into the oven, and 5) Let them roast for 50 minutes while you do your own best roasting impression while preparing the rest of dinner, standing or sitting nearby.

That’s how I did it today, and also once last week and the week before (except for the air conditioner part; no need to turn mine off because I don’t have one. 🙂 Yes, it’s often summer roasting time here in my kitchen).

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The results are worth it though, and you also can’t discount the perspiration inspiration.

Sweat I swear
Is what I wear,
My beats are bold and
My beets are golden.
My features wetter
Than washed red peppers,
Onions chopped and garlic diced,
Potatoes cut and pink flesh shown,
This time I own, as pieces roast.
My current state, do not bemoan,
The heat is real, but here, no boast,
Cooled a bit with fresh apple juice,
Fifty minutes? Sixty would be nice,
Got an eggplant going, for baba ghanoush.

That is the state of things here, truth in rhyme.

Olive oil and salt and pepper were also involved, and purple carrots too. I’ll include them here in the more traditional, full version of the recipe.

Summer Roasting Roasted Vegetables

  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 3 red potatoes, peeled
  • 3 golden beets, peeled
  • 3 purple carrots
  • 3 onions
  • 1 red pepper
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  1. Dice the garlic.
  2. Chop the other vegetables (into similar-sized pieces; I did roughly 1 cm cubes).
  3. Add the vegetables, olive oil, salt, and pepper to a baking dish.
  4. Mix everything together.
  5. Roast at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes.

The end result is nothing but sweet, roasted vegetable goodness.

It’s also easy to make, and the choice of vegetables, and colors, is up to you. Later in the fall I’ll also add Brussels sprouts and butternut squash. The numbers of each vegetable is also flexible, but if you do solid threes across the cutting board, you can make it a game of culinary #threestag. This time, except for the one red pepper, I was threezing (but not freezing). Next time, I’m going try 2 Tbsp of olive oil too instead of 3 because I think that’ll be enough, or I’ll add more vegetables.

And that’s summer roasting! Yes, there’s the oven. But there’s also the taste, and the colors a plenty (some shown here below, before roasting), for the overall loving.

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Adirondack Red Potatoes

adfs

Golden Beets

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Purple Carrots

 

It’s on the calendar

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It’s on the calendar.

Plantains.

Next week.

Them and me. And possibly some friends.

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I just had the best plain plantains, courtesy of my  neighbor, courtesy of me taking care of her mail while she was away.

It may actually be a week or two, since I’ll be at a conference for part of next week (Baltimore!), and according to my neighbor what you do is buy the plantains green and then let them ripen for 3-4 days (they should turn yellow). But this is definitely happening.

Between now and then, I’m sure I’ll look up some recipes (if you have a good one, let me know!), but this is how she does it: after the plantains are ripe, you cut them into small pieces and fry them for about 5, not more than 10 minutes in oil. The oil (she said she used a palm/vegetable oil mixture from Whole Foods) should be hot enough so it sizzles a bit when you add the plantains, and you use enough oil to cover the pieces. “I don’t usually fry things and use a lot of oil like that,” she said, “but this is way to do it.” I told her I wasn’t a big fryer either but was going to do it.

She added that another thing you can do is marinade the plantains for an hour first with salt and ginger, and then fry them. Sounds good to me too. It looks like I’ll have at least two recipes going when the time comes.

Today we answer the question: Munchkins: Can you eat them?

Leave a reply

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Yes!

Wizard-of-Oz-w16

No.

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Maybe so?

The question was originally posed by a friend a few months ago, when I was giving a tour of the pumpkins in my hallway. My response at the time was, “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out!” The time for finding out finally came a few weeks ago, as one of my original three Munchkins had gone bad (the floor life on that one was apparently only 5 months) and another one was starting to show a little mold ring around the collar. Or you know, MRATC as they say in the business. Or as I just made up right now.

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MRATC, here visible with the Munchkin now right-side up. Its lack of a middle piece stemmed from my little niece having a good time moving it one day from the hallway to the kitchen, and back, on repeat 🙂

I figured the best way to answer the question would be to bake the Munchkins as if they were regular pumpkins. So I cut them in half, then cut them in half again, scooped out the seeds, and popped them in the oven for 25-30 minutes at 375 degrees.

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After cutting away the MRATC, I wound up with six pieces to bake. I also baked them face down, as shown in the last picture above (the one with the pumpkin disco effect, #nofilter). When I took them out of the oven, they looked, felt, and……….drumroll…………tasted pretty much like regular-sized pumpkins.

So, Munchkins: Can you eat them??? Yes!!

They’re not just for decoration anymore.

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Munchkins with Maple Syrup, Mmmmmmm.

If you’re feeling the fiber, you can even eat the skin, which is fairly thin. I baked the mini seeds too, and they also turned out well. I added a little olive oil and salt, and put them in the oven until crispy. I actually liked the Munchkin seeds better than the regular pumpkin seeds that I had made recently – the mini ones were less woody, more crispy, and easy to chew. I’ll try this again in the fall come pumpkin time, but I think we’ve found a keeper, in particular for the seeds. Good and crunchy. Has anyone else ever cooked with Munchkins? If you have some great uses or ideas, let me know!

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Chocolate Covered Matzoh

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Chocolate covered Matzoh!

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This is one of those recipes where the name is 100% descriptive of the final product. And how about that final product.

Sweet, chocolatey, easy, and yes, there is matzoh there, but now it’s sweet, chocolately matzoh. Eating a piece for the first time is like discovering Cocoa Krispies after having eaten plain Rice Krispies your entire life.

I was the last of my relatives to sign up for which Passover dessert to bring to the second seder on Saturday, which meant that twelve others had already selected their category by the time I got the website. Waiting for me when I got there was the following: “Kosher for Passover, non-dairy cake, cookies or something else.”

I figured I’d figure it out Saturday morning, which is what I did in terms of the recipe and the production, but the actual idea came on Thursday during our weekly group run. I mentioned my pending Passover dessert duty, and the girl I was running with said something like, “Chocolate covered matzoh is really good and easy,” to which I said, “That sounds great! I’m going to do that. How do you make it?” to which she said, “You just melt some butter and sugar, brush it on the matzoh and bake it for a few minutes, and then add the chocolate,” to which I said, “Oh, that’s going to be good, I’m going to win the desserts!” Then I assured her that it wasn’t a contest but rather just a lot of people bringing something, and that it was the first time it was a little more organized. I also noted that to my knowledge, no one had ever made chocolate covered matzoh before, which meant that my contribution would have the potential of being not only good, but new.

I was feeling good about the pending baking experiment, and on Friday while I was hanging out with my brother and his girlfriend, we got to talking about the desserts we were going to make. Up for them was the following: homemade macaroons dipped in chocolate, and with chocolate drizzled on top (it’s a good thing I don’t have a picture of these because you might like them more than my chocolate matzoh 🙂 ). It came out during the conversation that my brother hadn’t signed up for a dessert slot, which in no way deterred the macaroon-making that followed, and that I had glossed over a small detail about my dessert category, which in a large way would have left me embarrassed had I not realized it in time. Kosher for Passover, non-dairy cake, cookies or something else. “Ahhhhh, yes, so maybe it’s a good idea if I don’t use butter when making the chocolate covered matzoh,” I said to myself and out loud. “Or milk chocolate.” The result: a delicious vegan dessert.

Vegan Chocolate Covered Matzoh

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 Tbsp sugar
  • 8-10 matzohs
  • 15 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

Steps

  1. Mix the oil and sugar
  2. Brush and coat the top side of each matzoh with the oil and sugar mixture (I used a spoon for this step)
  3. Arrange the matzohs in single layer in your baking dishes
  4. Bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees (or was it 400 degrees? I’m missing this detail in my notes. What is important is taking the matzoh out before the edges start turning black. The rest of the matzoh will have a golden look.)
  5. Now take the baking dishes out of the oven, and add a handful of chocolate chips to each matzoh (about 1.5 oz per piece). Once the chocolate chips have melted (this may take about 5 minutes or more), spread the now-melted chocolate chips over the matzoh to cover the entire top side (I used the back of a spoon to do the spreading).
  6. And then put the matzohs in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes (for the chocolate to cool and harden)

When I made these this past Saturday, I also played around with a few different oil and sugar ratios. The first one was 1/2 cup oil with 1/4 cup sugar, which turned out to be a lot of sugar (and sweeter!):

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I also tried 1/2 cup oil with 1/4 cup brown sugar, which likewise turned out to be a lot of sugar. On the matzohs where I used these mixtures, you could see extra grains of sugar sitting on top of the matzohs after the 15-20 minutes of baking.

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How everything looked after adding the chocolate chips to the baked matzoh

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And a close up: chips melting, sugar showing

I also tried the following with the oil and sugar, in a second batch that I made:

  • Using and brushing on the same oil and sugar mixture as above, but scraping away the excess sugar before baking
  • Brushing some of the matzohs with plain oil and then sprinkling a small amount of sugar on top, and then baking

The results for these sugar-lighter pieces seemed as good as the results for the ones I had made earlier with more sugar, so I went with the sugar-lighter version for the recipe above. The 1/2 Tbsp of sugar is a good estimate for what I’d sprinkled on (if you do the math, that’s 3/16 tsp sugar per piece of matzoh..want more or less sugar? Go for it! The semi-sweet chocolate chips also already have sugar in them). In the recipe, the first two steps are, ‘Mix the oil and sugar, and then brush this mixture on,” but as noted here, another option is you could also brush the oil on first and then do a sugar sprinkle.

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Here in mid-spread: Some soon-to-be chocolate covered matzoh (L), and chocolate covered matzoh (R)

In the end, assuming that everyone who had signed up for a dessert brought a dessert, plus my brother and his girlfriend, we had 14 desserts altogether to choose from. If you figure that each dessert had about 15 servings and that about 30 people came altogether, that’s a whopping 7 dessert servings per person! There’s always room for dessert, though, from the fresh fruit to the sponge cakes to the apple kugel to the macaroons and to the chocolate covered matzoh and all the rest.

One day, I’ll probably give the butter version of Chocolate Covered Matzoh a try. Maybe I’ll also try adding salt, cinnamon, or various nuts, as I saw in some recipes, or adding something simple like orange zest. A fresh hint of orange to go with the chocolate? I have a feeling that would be even more chocolate-covered-matzoh-y good.

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An Ethiopian Double – Injera and Ye Atakilt Alicha

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Let us see, what here do we have… A large bowl, used for something. The contents – empty, with a film remaining, dried. Used recently, a batter of some type, yes last night! A cutting board, similarly splattered, an upturned pot and pan behind. But why upturned? The shelves past the stove, full, a recently used bowl, close, yes the dishes! Not cooking now, but the morning after, the dishes all done but one, a bowl to go. Dish rack full, pots inverted, pots in place, pots not in place, yes pots drying! The bowl, posing, waiting, take my picture, speaking what? To the brim, over, no more, no matter, well used, well spent, alive, and dried.

Yes, two nights ago I made an Ethiopian dinner and had my parents over, and the night before that I went to McCarter Theater and saw Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. As you may have deduced. 🙂

Injera, the Ethiopian spongy flatbread, was on the menu Saturday night, as was Ye Atakilt Alicha (Green beans and carrots), Misr Wat (Red lentil stew), and Ayib (Cottage cheese). That’s four items, so yes, actually it was an Ethiopian quadruple, but it’ll be a double here for recipe-writing purposes. I shared the cottage cheese recipe last month, and I’ll do a write-up the red lentils later after I make it again.

Like the cottage cheese recipe, I got the other recipes from the Ethiopian cooking class I took in December and January. I made them all during a 3-4 hour window on Saturday afternoon (except for the first part of the injera, which you have to start earlier), and it turned out pretty good. I also got two good reviews.

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This is how everything looked on my plate right before I ate it. The injera was actually lighter in color (more pictures below), and yes, the shiny metal thing at the top left corner was a fork. Whoops! I played with cropping out the fork, but then the rest of the picture didn’t look balanced. We actually didn’t use forks – gotta use just your fingers and the injera! – but the forks were there on the table, at least for a minute anyway at the beginning before I remembered to put them away. The place-settings were the product of my pace-setting, that is, of my efforts to finish and bring the final few things together at the same time, and timely. Coming up after dinner was Café Improv at the Arts Council.

I wouldn’t call the injera recipe complicated, but it was a two-pager – page 1 was how to make the irsho (sourdough starter), and page 2 was how to make the injera once the starter was ready. Here are the recipes and how it all worked out.

Irsho (Sourdough starter)

  • 2 cups teff flour
  • 2 cups warm water
  1. Mix the teff flour and water in a large bowl
  2. Cover the bowl with cheesecloth, and store in a warm place with good circulation
  3. Stir the batter well at least once a day
  4. The starter will be ready in a few days (depends on environmental factors). When you see tiny bubbles forming at the surface, it’s good to go.

Injera

  • Sourdough starter (the mixture from above)
  • 5 cups warm water
  • 2 cups teff flour (plus 1 Tbsp more)
  • 2 cups buckwheat flour (if you want gluten free) or barley flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 Tbsp teff flour
  • Oil for coating the frying pan (I used a 12″ non-stick pan)
  1. Mix the starter, water (5 cups), teff flour (2 cups) and buckwheat flour (2 cups). It should have the consistency of thin pancake batter.
  2. Cover the bowl with cheesecloth, and store in a warm place to ferment for at least a day.
  3. During this time, stir the batter a few times.
  4. Then, once you’re ready to cook the injera, add the salt (1 tsp), baking soda (1 tsp), and extra teff flour (1 Tbsp). Mix together, and then let the batter sit for five minutes.
  5. Heat the frying pan over medium heat, and lightly coat with oil.
  6. Pour the batter (about 1/2 cup at a time) into the pan, and quickly turn the pan around as if making a crepe (so the batter is spread as thinly as possible and covering most of the pan).
  7. Cover the pan with a lid as the injera cooks.
  8. Cook until holes appear all over the injera. Around the same time, you’ll notice the outer edge of the injera also beginning to curl up from the pan. Together, these mean the injera is done (you only cook the injera on one side – no flipping).
  9. Remove the injera, and place on a clean cloth to cool (I stacked them on a single plate, with paper towels between each one).

As I keep trying this and make injera again in the future, I have a feeling I may tweak or combine the two recipes in some way. Some of the injera recipes I’ve seen online seem to omit the starter step, so that’s one thing I want to ask our instructor about. I also forget why we included some buckwheat/barley flour rather than using all teff flour – another question to follow up on with her. On the flip side (remember, no flipping the injera when you cook it), you know what making more injera means, right? That’s right! It means also making more Ethiopian dishes to go with it! And sharing them with friends and family. The recipe handout from the class was 17 pages long.

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The starter at step 1 – the teff flour and water, doing a good imitation of chocolate pudding mix.

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The starter after two days (also after having sat unmixed for 8 hours overnight) – a frothy top, plus bubbles bubbling up when mixed.

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The starter ready, so now time to add the (additional) teff flour and buckwheat flour and to make the batter bigger.

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The injera batter, half a day later – with a thick, chocolate mousse-like consistency (until I mixed it).

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And the injera batter a day after the initial mixing – temporarily settled in anticipation of the cooking step.

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It was the best of injera times

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And not the best of injera times

But overall it was a good time. One note to self for the next time: Remember to cover the frying pan when cooking the injera. My mom and I were trying to figure out why the injera wasn’t cooking evenly, and one by one and by trial and error, we settled on the following as the optimal system: use about a 1/2 cup to 5/8 cup of batter at a time, do a quick swirl-turn of the pan to spread the batter out (and do the swirl-turn fast so as to not have the pan off the burner for too long), and also move the pan around as needed to give more heat to certain parts. But the cover! I forgot about that. That may have been the single key to the question of ‘how to cook the injera evenly, and easily.’ The recipe above made about 15 pieces of injera. Together I think we ate 5. Good, spongy, slighty tangy: injera.

At this point, I know there might be another question out there: “Yes, there’s been a lot of talk about injera, and those bowls of brown liquid look lovely, but how hard is it to find flour?”

To this question, I will say, It’s not as teff as you think.

If you live in the greater Princeton area, you barley have to go far at all.

You could even ride your bike to the store, if you’re a young buckwheat like me.

Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t the best, but you gotta admit, the first one’s a good starter.

Pero en serio, we have some options. Store-wise, the best one-stop options for flour are the Whole Earth Center and Whole Foods. Both have teff, buckwheat, and barley. The rest that I checked out were kind of hit and miss, yes-this and no-that. Wegmans has teff and buckwheat, McCaffrey’s has buckwheat, and Shoprite has barley. Wegmans had the lowest-priced teff, but otherwise the prices were about the same – a little more here, a little less there. So unless you really like food-shopping and driving around (or perhaps biking or walking, if you’re buck-wheating the trend), hitting up one of the W stores should work fine for all your injera needs.

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Ye Atakilt Alicha (Green beans and carrots)

  • 3 red onions, sliced
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 6 oz tomato paste
  • 2 Tbsp ginger, minced
  • 2 Tbsp garlic, minced
  • 2 pounds green beans, ends trimmed and cut into two pieces
    (or 1 small cabbage, chopped into pieces)
  • 1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 2″ long pieces
  • 4 jalapeños, seeded and sliced
  • Water, added as needed to prevent sticking
  1. Heat the oil a in pan over low heat.
  2. Add the onions and salt, and cook until soft or browned.
  3. Add the tomato paste, ginger, and garlic, and cook for about 10 minutes.
  4. Add the carrots, and cook for about 10 minutes.
  5. Add the green beans, and cook until the carrots and green beans are mostly tender.
  6. Add the jalapeños, and cook for 5 minutes.
    Note: if the mixture is sticking to the pan along the way, add a little water. You can also cover the pan to have the carrots and green beans cook more quickly.

This is one of those recipes that is simple, easy to make, and tastes great. I’ve made it twice now with green beans (pictured below) and also twice with cabbage.

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Even when I played around with the recipe – like by cooking the onions without the oil (just with a little water) and adding the oil later, or by cooking the onions in half the oil, or by cooking the whole recipe over medium heat and adding more water as needed along the way – it always turned out good.

When we made it during the class, I also realized the following: you don’t need to chop off the bottom ends of the garlic – you can mince everything and then toss it all in! I’m not sure why I had never thought of that before, but doing that is awesome – several seconds saved, and my sense of conservation satisfied. In the class, we also sometimes used a grater/shredder for the ginger and garlic. So that’s an option too if one day, you know, you find yourself in an extra grate mood.

In any case…here a few final notes and pictures on the alicha. For the carrots, first I cut them into pieces about 2″ long. Then I took the fatter pieces (the ones that had come from the big ends of the carrots), and I split them in half the long way to make them closer in size to the rest. They don’t have to be perfect – any size is fine – but this made the pieces about the same size.

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The green beans don’t have to be perfectly uniform, either. And in fact you (or perhaps some helpful friends or kids) can do this step with just your (or their) hands – no knife necessary. That’s how we did it in the class – we snapped the ends off and then snapped the beans in half.

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With the jalapeños, if you like things a little hotter, you probably know what to do. I didn’t add any seeds to the alicha, but they’re there if you want them, and the jalapeños can also cook for more or less time at the end.

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And that’s it! An Ethiopian Quadruple Double. Give them a try, and see what you think. It’s no mystery I think they’re pretty good 🙂