All I've been eating for the past two weeks....

Hello, muffin.


It's been quite nice spending two weeks with you and all of your friends.

I'm glad I learned your almond butter secrets; you taste pretty good.

It is time, however, for you to find some new homes.

Anyone want one?
Or twelve?

Better Than The Bakery Cranberry-Nut Muffins

3½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons double-acting baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon non-iodized table salt
2/3 cup unsalted butter, at slightly-cooler-than room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons creamy almond butter, at room temperature
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1¼ cup low-fat buttermilk, at room temperature
2½ cups fresh or frozen cranberries, chopped in half (if using frozen, do not thaw)
1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray. Spray the top of the pan as well as the inside of the cups.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl. Set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar on medium speed of an electric mixer until lightened in color and well mixed, about 2 minutes. Turn off the mixer and add the almond butter. Return the mixer to medium speed and cream until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, continuing to beat at medium speed until smooth, about 45 seconds.

Gently fold in 1/3 of the flour mixture, followed by 1/3 of the buttermilk, until the flour just barely disappears. Fold in another 1/3 flour and then 1/3 buttermilk, and repeat once more, again, just until you can no longer see the flour. Do not over mix. Gently fold in the cranberries and walnuts just until incorporated.

Spoon the batter into the muffin pan, filling each cup so that it mounds slightly over the top of the cup. The batter should fill 12-18 muffin cups, depending on the size of the cup.

Bake 40-45 minutes, or until the tops are mounded, smooth and deeply golden brown, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time.

Remove pan to a cooling rack. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 15 minutes to set, and gently remove to a cooling rack for another 3-5 minutes. Eat while still warm.

The Best Kind of Saturday

As a once again very busy underemployed jack-of-all trades, I have learned to value the long Saturday afternoons I now have wide-open-free for experimenting, crafting, stirring, tasting. The best of these Saturdays, shining bright after an endless week of carpooling and 30-minute meals are filled with some variation of the ultimate trifecta: pie, granola, and ice cream.


The pie: a sour-cherry confection, baked for my cousin’s 21st birthday (perhaps the ultimate hang-over cure?). I started with a double crust pate brisee from Martha,* and mounded a precariously high pile of canned (uh, I know, not the best, but hey, this was the request) sour cherries mixed with a tablespoon of cornstarch, ½ cup-of sugar, ½ teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt (next time, lemon juice!). The top crust fell apart a bit upon its careful placement, but hey, that’s what “rustic” cooking is all about.


The granola: my adaptation of Orangette’s adaptation of Nigella Lawson’s breakfast blend. It’s got the usual suspects—oats, nuts, honey, cinnamon—but is laced with applesauce, unsweetened coconut, and brown rice syrup, the secret to crunchy clusters without corn syrup. The recipe is super-flexible, so, at least in my house, no two batches are quite the same. Sometimes I add molasses, sometimes I add sesame, sometimes it’s flax seeds. Each adds its own magic.

The roasting process (especially if making a double or triple batch) can take quite a while, especially in my parents’ tinier than tiny oven, but there is seriously nothing more therapeutic than slow, routinized stirring, tossing, and tasting. And with this winter aiming to be the longest, coldest winter, um, ever, sticking by a hot stove all day is pretty freakin’ great. Once finished, this granola is worlds away from anything you can buy at the store, flavor-wise, money-wise, and health-wise. I eat it most mornings with yogurt, some kind of fruity topping, and occasionally mixed with Flax Plus.


The ice cream: left-over from my grandmother’s 78th Sundae birthday party. The ménage a toi of chocolate, vanilla, and mint-chocolate chip is particularly good topped with coconut, chocolate sauce and a cherry.

*Try as I might to convince myself to try a new recipe, like the supposedly foolproof Cook’s Illustrated vodka-laced pastry, I just can’t break with habit. This crust may be a bit finicky during humid weather, but it is crumbly-flaky in just the way I like it, and melts on the tongue in a way M&Ms can only dream of.

Oh, and a big Verdant Kitchen P.S. I prepared a trio of dips and crackers for a CDC party last week. Check it out over on my other webpage.

Unemployment Croissants

These days, it has become fashionable to refer to one’s lack of a job as funemployment. The word pops up everywhere it seems – Facebook, blogs, backyard barbeques, and the like. Those who use it always emphasize the first syllable, drawing out the fun: it’s FUNemployment, and so certainly not UNemployment. I find it absolutely absurd, and have thus taken to extreme eye rolling every time the word pops up. It’s not fun to be unemployed. It’s boring. Afternoons are the biggest challenge – after filling up my mornings with a 5 mile run, another trip to the grocery store, and an early lunch, I’m left with way-too-short lists of job prospects and applications, and an infinite amount of time in which to complete them.

So, I’ve started trying to think of projects (long projects) to fill up my days. Like seeing how thin I can learn how to slice a zucchini for a salad:

Or practicing my artichoke trimming skills (I'm getting pretty good – watch out, Thomas Keller!):

My best idea so far, however, has been my 24-hour croissant-making extravaganza.

I’d never attempted such an involved baking task before. I tend towards simpler, more rustic desserts, embracing the homely ruggedness of a crooked cake, ugly cookies, or an almost-but-not-quite burnt piecrust. In fact, last weekend, Rosie and I experimented with less-than picture perfect mini pie baking when we hauled in almost 10 pounds of berries from Sauvie Island. They may have fallen apart upon contact with any serving device, but they were definitely delicious. And I’ve already spoken of my love for galettes – the most rustic pie of all – which always taste better when thrown together at the last minute.

Last minute these croissants were not. I found Nancy Silverton’s recipe for the dough online at Epicurious (the story was published in Gourmet in 2000), read through it a couple of times, and began work on Wednesday, at about 2 in the afternoon. It took the rest of my day to make the dough, let it rise, and perform the folds (folding in sticks of butter, that is!) necessary for a flaky pastry. The dough was left to slow-rise in the fridge overnight, and I started with the fun part the next morning.

My only variation from the recipe was to make a couple of my own fillings. First, in an attempt to both use up some of those berries and to recreate one of my favorite childhood treats, I pureed a pint of raspberries with a little honey. Delicious on its own, or as a sauce, I’ve been using the leftovers as a pick-me-up in the late afternoons following. I also threw some walnuts, cinnamon, and sugar in the food processor to make a cinnamon roll-type filling. These leftovers are also delicious.

The rolling step takes a bit of patience, since, just like any yeasted dough, the croissant dough has a spring to it that wants to prevent any attempts at uniform thinness. I had learned/taught myself in the past to let such types of dough come to room temperature before rolling to allow for maximum flexibility. However, the massive amount of butter in croissants makes it impossible to wait for the temperature to rise – you don’t want oozing butter all over your table (that is, until the pastries are cooked!). So I had to whack it around a bit, but eventually ended up with some pretty nice triangles that all rolled up into more or less croissant-like shapes.

Once shaped and rolled, the croissants have to sit for a final rise – about 2 ½ hours – covered. Nancy (I’d like to think we’re on a first name basis now) suggests setting up a tent for the pastries using clean garbage bags and upside down glasses. I did this for a couple batches; but, while strangely pretty:


it was actually an unnecessarily cumbersome step, and I ended up using toothpicked plastic wrap in the end.

After running an errand or two, twiddling my thumbs a bit, and staring into space for a while, it was time to set up the oven. And, just like the rest of the process, this step required attention and patience (especially since my temporary house has only one very small baking sheet, so I had to cook the croissants in four separate batches). The oven starts at 425; once it’s heated, you have to spritz it with water, close the door, pop in the croissants, spritz again, turn the heat down, wait ten minutes, turn the pan, turn the heat down, and wait ten more minutes. And then do it again, over and over, watching the clock like a hawk, awaiting perfection.

But.

When they’re finally done – all I can say is awesome.

I mean, check these out:

I made those! And they're not just beautiful, they're butter-oozing, melt-in-your-mouth flaky, toasty rolls of greatness. Remember back when I called a certain galette the best thing I've ever made? Well, these are about a billion-gagillion (totally a number, ask a four-year old) times better. I urge you, the next time you have 24 hours of free time on your hands, make these. And if you're in a job situation like, they'll almost be enough to put a little fun- into your un-….

(yeah, sorry about that one)


*But, in all seriousness, if you are in the Portland area and need some type of employee to do anything, or even if you don’t need an employee, but want to make a certain expert croissant baker super happy, talk to me. I will most certainly bake you something.

Loose Ends

Yesterday I realized that the end of college is actually a long string of endings – finishing classes finishing the thesis, burning the thesis, passing orals, finishing finals –leading up to the big one – graduation, which for Reed is this Monday. I’ve spent the last few days tying up loose ends – binding my thesis, clearing off my library desk, paying my printing fees and overdue fines, selling back all the books I thought I’d want but now I’d rather trade in for money.

My parents arrive tomorrow, and a lot of great eating will ensue (stay posted!). For now, though, here are some loose ends from the week:

- I found not-too-expensive early raspberries at Trader Joe’s the other day. I cannot resist raspberries – ever. I ate half the container when I got home. The next morning I baked the rest into muffins with walnuts and gifted them to Matt and my hungry finals-ing housemates.

- I went to Café Castagna for dinner the other night with Matt. I had heard nothing but raves about it, and so I was very excited to eat there. We had a pork liver pâté appetizer, and then he had a burger and I had a white bean and rapini stew with chorizo. The pâté was tasty, but my entrée was way too salty. Matt’s burger was slightly over cooked, and he said the last time he was there his fries were way too salty too. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when we left. Not only was my stomach full from such a heavy meal, but that salt – uh. I love salt, but never so much that you can taste it.

- The Moreland Farmer’s market opened yesterday! It was too rainy and cold to mill around too much, but I bought some delicious honey Greek yogurt, leeks, pea shoots, and this:


I made some green soup a la Orangette and served it with a bit of Manchego on top and roasted carrots on the side. It fed all of my housemates with no leftovers.


- Leftover salmon makes a lovely substitute for steak in my improvised Thai salad:


I mixed together baby greens, extra spinach, and a chiffonade of basil (however much looks right). Into that goes red onion or shallot sliced into very thin moons, diced cucumber, and the salmon (if I had had red pepper and/or left-over blanched veggies, that would have gone in as well). If you aren’t allergic to peanuts like I am, I imagine that a small handful of chopped toasted peanuts would be good on this as well. To make the dressing, I whisked together rice vinegar, lime juice, siracha, salt, and pepper, and then drizzled in a bit of sesame oil followed by olive oil. Dress the salad lightly and eat immediately.

On salad dressings: I always make my dressings to taste and on the fly, so they are always different. If you’re making your own, start with your acidic base and then add oil until it tastes right to you. If you want your dressing to be fully emulsified (most of the time I don’t really care), try making it in a small screw-top jar. You just dump everything in and shake vigorously until combined. It’s much easier and less messy than using a whisk. Also, it is already in a storage container if you make more than you need.