Alton Brown's Granola

I've been wanting to make some granola for a few weeks now, and finally had a free night to try my hand at some. Alton Brown's Granola Recipe looked delicious and pretty easy to throw together, so it was right up my alley.

I mixed by oats, nuts and shredded coconut into a big bowl:

And then separately mixed together my wet ingredients along with salt and sugar.

It looked sticky and delicious before I had even tossed it in the oven.

From about 30 minutes on, my house started to smell amazing, and I was pretty excited to taste it every time I peeked in the oven to stir it all together.

Once I pulled it out, I mixed in dried cranberries instead of raisins and then left it to cool over night.

Yesterday morning I didn't even mind getting up at 7 to feed the baby, because I knew I had Greek yogurt topped with granola to look forward to.

This was AMAZING. I ate it for breakfast, for snack, and for dessert. And I'll do that again every day until it's gone.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

These days I have very little time for cooking. Most of my time is taken up with stuff like this:

But the other night I was having a serious craving for dessert, so I did some Googling for a quick peanut butter cookie recipe, and found this one.

So easy! I mixed together my peanut butter, sugar, and an egg.

And scooped out the cookies onto a cookie sheet.

I made mine a little big, so they took about twice the amount of time as the recipe called for.

And then I smooshed in some Hershey Kisses, because that pushes peanut butter cookies over the edge into complete deliciousness.

These weren't the best peanut butter cookies I've ever have, but for the short amount of time it took they were perfect. And even tastier on the second and third days!

Finally Cooking Again...

I'm 37 weeks pregnant now, but had a burst of energy yesterday. Between mowing the lawn, weeding, and going grocery shopping, I also decided that I wanted a delicious home-cooked meal. I opened up Sarah Foster's Casual Cooking to see what inspired me, and was instantly drawn to "Skewered Thai Chicken Thighs with Spicy Peanut Sauce" (page 150.)

I don't cook with thighs very often, and they're a little difficult -- the fat isn't as easy to cut off the thigh as it is off the breast. I did my best and left them to soak in a delicious Thai marinade in my fridge for several hours. I had to alternate just one ingredient -- I didn't have tamarind sauce, but I found a jar of spicy Thai curry paste at the back of my pantry and tossed that in instead.

Meanwhile, I put together the "Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce." It need's to be said that I adore peanut sauce. I'll order chicken satay at a Thai restaurant just for the little bowl of peanut sauce and the delicious cucumber salad they often pair it with. I could tell from all the delicious ingredients going into this one, like ginger and honey and soy sauce, that this was going to be a winner.

And of course I didn't take any after pictures. We slapped the chicken on the grill, made it all delicious, and dipped it generously in peanut sauce. I was a happy camper. Next time I'll use chicken breasts, just because I'm more comfortable with them, but I'd be happy for there to be a next time.

I served the chicken with Sarah Foster's "Classic Cucumber Salad" (p. 212), which was nice and light and delicious. We have plenty of leftovers since our guests don't like cilantro, which was chopped in there along with vinegar, olive oil, and lime juice. So, more for us.

And finally, since all dinners should be served with dessert, I made Sarah Foster's "Fluffy Dark Chocolate Mousse" (p. 225). And it was the first time I've gotten to use my double-boiler, so that's fun.

I over-beat my egg whites, which made this mousse a little grainy, but the flavor was good. I'd make it again but be a little bit more careful about my timing.

So, there we go. Four recipes out of Sarah Foster's book. Hopefully this energy will continue for the next few weeks.

Dixie Peanut Brittle

Matt's Pork, Pickles, and Peanuts event at Duke Homestead resulted in a lot of extra peanuts, and I wanted to use some of them up. Luckily, he also brought home a little pamphlet from Virginia-Carolina Peanut Promotions entitled "All About Cooking Peanuts."

My mom was in town, and together we roasted and shelled a ton of peanuts.

And then followed these directions:

• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
• 3 cups raw shelled peanuts, skins on
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons baking soda

In a heavy saucepan heat sugar, syrup, water and salt to a rolling boil. Add peanuts. Reduce heat to medium and stir constantly. Cook to hard crack stage (300 to 310 degrees Fahrenheit).*

Add butter, then baking soda. Beat rapidly and pour onto a buttered surface spreading to 1/4-inch thickness. When cool break into pieces. Store in an airtight container.

*In the absence of a candy thermometer, test for hard crack stage by dropping a tiny bit of syrup into ice water (let it thread from a spoon into the water). When the threads are brittle (not pliable) it has reached the hard crack stage.

----------------------------

I don't have a candy thermometer, so we had to follow the dropping the syrup into water way.

Unfortunately, we didn't quite reach the hard crack stage. 

The flavors are delicious, but it's more the consistency of a peanut taffy than a brittle. If you're looking for something delicious to get stuck in your teeth, this is the recipe for you.

Walnut Cake with Mastic (p. 457)

I've never cooked with mastic before, and it took me a little while to track down. It's the resin of a bush and looks like crystal meth. (I've been watching a lot of Breaking Bad, otherwise I would have no clue what meth looks like.)

I finally found this at local restaurant/grocery store Neomonde, so it was time to make this cake to bring to a 4th of July cookout

The first step is to make a mastic-flavored olive oil, which is simply crushed mastic rocks dissolved into olive oil. I cooked them in a sauté pan for just a few minutes, until the mastic had disappeared, and then set it aside to cool.

Then it's just regular types of cake ingredients -- baking soda, baking powder, flour, and salt are mixed together for the dry ingredients, and eggs are separated for the wet. The egg yolks are beaten with some sugar before adding in the mastic flavored oil as well as plain yogurt. The egg whites are beaten until super fluffy, and more sugar is added in with this. Fold all the wet and dry ingredients together, as well as very finely chopped (actually, I used my food processor for this step) toasted walnuts.  

The dough comes together looking incredibly fluffy and delicious.

Pour all the batter into a lightly greased and floured cake pan and cook for about an hour.

Mine came out looking beautiful but fell once I turned away for a moment. Luckily, blueberries and powdered sugar can make anything pretty.

And whipped cream helps, too!  

This was light and tasty, and really more like a sweetened bread than a cake. My friend Sarah likened it to banana bread without the bananas, but in a good way. It's a nice healthy-tasting dessert variety.

mastic -- $5.99

yogurt -- $1.67

eggs -- $1.79 (with half left)

walnuts -- $6.99 (with about 3/4 of the bag remaining)

Total Cost of Walnut Cake with Mastic: $16.44

($1.37 per serving)

Turkish Apricots Stuffed with Sweet, Thick Yogurt (p. 449)

This is so delicious! So easy! Why don't we eat this every night?!

Seriously, make this. It's lovely. Here's how:

Plump the apricots by putting them in a pot with water until it comes to a boil, then simmer.

Drain the apricots, reserving some of the liquid. Use the reserved liquid and combine with sugar to make a sort of syrup. Add the apricots back into the mixture and cook until they're extremely soft. Remove them again but save the syrup.

When they're cool enough, open the apricots and stuff them with a combination of thick yogurt mixed with sugar.

Close them up, like whoopie pies, the recipe says. Whoopie pies? I love whoopie pies!

Sprinkle the tops with some chopped pistachio.

And drizzle the reserved syrup back over them.

Yum. These make me happy.

pistachios -- $1.70 (3/4 of the bag left for a snack at work tomorrow!)

apricots -- $8.04 (about 1/4 are left)

Total Cost of Turkish Apricots Stuffed with Sweet, Thick Yogurt: $9.74

Oven-Roasted Fish with Vegetables (p. 380) with Turkish Walnut Sauce (p. 272) and Leblebi (p. 143)

This fish recipe is one from Spain and is known for its simplicity and no-fuss preparation. And that's pretty much true. In an oven-safe dish, layer sauteed onion and lightly fried potato slices before adding your fish -- a whole one, and preferably red snapper -- with slashes cut into each side.

Luckily, my asian market had just the thing.

Apologies for my photos this post, they're not super lovely.

On top of the fish, strew strips of pepper (softened in olive oil on the stove top) and slices of tomato. Pour a mixture of saffron, olive oil, and white wine over the fish and top with salt and bread crumbs. Then just bake.

This was pretty good, though the red snapper was a bit of a bear to parse out. The meat basically falls of the bones, but the bones fall of the bones, too. So we had a lot of those on our plate. Still, the flavor was nice and the saffron really shone through.

The winner of the fish course, though, was the sauce I decided to make at the last minute. I slapped Turkish Walnut Sauce for Fish or Vegetables together in about 5 minutes while the fish was resting. You can make the whole thing in the food processor -- it's just fresh bread crumbs, garlic, salt, walnuts, olive oil, white wine vinegar, and water. 

This was super delicious. I'd smother it all over my fish and vegetables every day. And I will, since we have a ton leftover. 

Most of the soups I have left are either bean or chickpea variations, and I'm trying to work through a couple each week. This week's soup, Leblebi, is Tunisian Chickpea Soup, so it's obviously of the chickpea sort, but made exciting by the mere fact that it contains harissa, which I adore. I've made my own before, but finally tracked down some commercially made harissa last week, and was excited to try it. There's a note in my cookbook about using a little less of the commercial type than you would home made because it's much spicier, but I sort of forgot about that.

The soup is super simple; just soften chickpeas (soaked overnight and then drained) in chicken stock, season with cumin, salt, garlic, and harissa, and eventually add in some thinly sliced sauteed onion. I added the amount of harissa that the recipe called for, which was of course too much for the commercial kind.

Luckily, Matt and I love us some spicy food, and thought this soup was a rock star. Mine could actually barely be considered soup since most of the broth was absorbed or cooked off by the time I served it. Soups almost never work out quite right when you halve the recipes. We didn't even care, though, and garnished the chickpeas with crumbled boiled eggs. We loved this, and will totally make it again some day.

green pepper -- $1.69

red snapper -- ARGHhhh. I threw my receipt away. I have no clue how much this cost.

potatoes -- $2.37

onion -- $1.02

Total Cost of Oven-Roasted Fish with Vegetables: $5.08, plus the price of the fish.

Total Cost of Turkish Walnut Sauce for Fish or Vegetables: Free 

I love having all the ingredients I need!

harissa -- $1.39

Total Cost of Leblebi: $1.39

($.46 per serving)

Walnut Stuffed Roasted Onions (p. 328)

Last night we just had leftover Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy but I wanted to jazz it up with a little something else. Walnut Stuffed Roasted Onions are a pretty fun and easy side to make with any dish, and can add a tiny bit of meat flavoring to an otherwise vegetarian meal.

Just rub the onions (I actually only made one although the recipe calls for 6) down with a little olive oil and toss them in the oven until they're completely tender, about 40 minutes. They can be placed directly on the oven rack but definitely put a pan underneath the onions -- they'll drip.

Once the onions are out of the oven and cool enough to touch, lop off the tops and pull out the soft insides with a fork, leaving a few outer layers to hold the original shape.

Chop up the leaves that were extracted and sauté them with diced pancetta -- once the pancetta starts to brown add in chicken stock and season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Stir in chopped walnuts and cook for about 10 minutes, until the chicken stock has all been absorbed.

Stuff the onions with the pancetta mixture and pop them back in the oven for about 20 minutes, then serve immediately.

We weren't really sure how to eat this, so we pretty much just ate the pancetta stuffing out. I think the outer layer of onion must have really just been for looks. The stuffing was great, though -- both of us really enjoyed it. The walnuts gave a nice crunch, and everything was coated with oniony-pancetta-y love.

onion -- $.99

pancetta -- $3.99 (most is leftover)

chicken stock -- $3.50 (3/4 is left over)

Total Cost of Walnut Stuffed Roasted Onions: $8.48

($8.48 per serving -- though with so many ingredients leftover, this would have been much cheaper to make in bulk)

Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy (p. 184)

This was my last recipe of the old year (I made it for NYE dinner), and also the last pizza recipe in the book. Sad! The recipes are starting to dwindle!

A double-crusted pizza is more like a savory pie than a pizza, because it has crust on both the bottom and the top, with the pizza deliciousness housed between the two layers. I was inspired by a recent pizza I had from Capital Creations that had a cornmeal crust (that, and the fact that I'm low on regular flour) so I made The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook's Basic Pizza Dough but used cornmeal instead of whole wheat flour. It turned out nicely.

The innards of the pizza came together quickly -- sauté yellow onion and smooshed garlic cloves in olive oil until soft and then add in your washed greens (I used spinach) until they're nice and soft.

Then add in chopped olives (kalamata -- yum!), plumped golden raisins, and pine nuts and cook for just a few minutes. Flavor with salt and pepper. The recipe also called for anchovies but knowing Matt wouldn't love them I left those out.

Once the pizza dough was ready, I lined a pie dish with about half of it and then filled it up with everything in my skillet. I formed a circle with the rest of the dough and placed it over the top of the pie, brushed it with a beaten egg and cut some slices in it it so that it wouldn't all explode in the oven.

And then into the oven, and out it came, perfect and beautiful.

We liked this. I think I prefer a single-crusted pizza, but this was definitely enjoyable.

Very filling, but enjoyable.

spinach -- $3.29

yellow onion -- $1.00

olives -- $3.90 (some left)

golden raisins -- $3.15 (tons left)

pine nuts -- $4.20 (about half left)

Total Cost of Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy: $15.54

($1.94 per serving)

A Compote of Turkish Dried Fruits and Nuts (p. 448)

I haven't done a dessert in a while, but we're having guests tonight for a Halloween cookout so I wanted to have something sweet to offer other than a ridiculous amount of candy.

I used dried figs and apricots to make this, but you could use any favored dried fruit if you make it. Just be sure to cover the dried fruits with boiling water to plump them up for about 15 minutes before moving onto the next step.

Meanwhile, toast the nuts -- I used a combination of walnuts and hazelnuts, both coarsely chopped. After about 15 minutes in the oven they were a nice golden brown. Process the nuts along with sugar in a food processor and then set them aside.

Arrange the now plump fruits prettily in a round oven dish.

I used a spring form pan, which was a total mistake -- use a regular oven dish. When I poured my simple syrup over the fruits a lot of it came out of the apparently not perfectly tight bottom of the spring form. I placed it on a baking dish before putting the whole thing in the oven, but it still made a total mess. I keep finding sticky spots on my floor from the syrup even though I've cleaned the area up about five times.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes in the oven pull the dish back out and scatter the nut mixture over the top. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes or so.

Because of my issue with the spring form, I needed to dump my compote into another dish -- so it definitely didn't hold its shape at all.

I served this warm with a little bit of sweetened greek yogurt on top. I loved the nut flavor, but wished that the dried fruits were in smaller pieces -- a little kind of goes a long way. Still, this is good, and I'll enjoy some semi-healthy desserts this week.

dried apricots -- $3.99

dried figs -- $3.99

walnuts -- $4.69 (for a giant bag, most of which is still left)

yogurt -- $1.00

Total Cost of A Compote of Turkish Dried Fruits and Nuts: $13.67

Roast Fish with Fennel, Potatoes, and Carrots (p. 372) and Braised Cavolo Nero with Chestnuts (p. 303)

Today was the day I discovered my dislike of the smell and taste of cooked kale. But more on that later. First, roast fish, which is always delicious.

The main vegetables in this dish -- fennel, potatoes, and carrots -- are prepared first. Peel and chop the carrots and potatoes (the recipe actually calls for fingerling or new potatoes, but I only had regular ones, so I prepared them in the same way) and put them in boiling water for about 5 minutes, just until they're starting to soften. Drain the veggies and place them in a bowl along with quartered fennel bulbs, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Mix everything together and pour the ingredients out on a baking pan to roast for about 40 minutes.

Chop the green fennel tops along with rosemary to create a topping for the fish. Rub the salmon steaks down with olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper. Top the fish with the chopped herbs and lemon zest and place it on top of the already roasted vegetables.

Put the dish back into the oven until the salmon is cooked. The recipe quoted 10-15 minutes, but mine took closer to 30 for it to be cooked thoroughly.

Then serve!

This was quite lovely. I liked the flavors that the rosemary and fennel added, and the vegetables were delicious. The addition of the thinly sliced lemons to the roasted vegetables added a subtle citrus flavor, and the juices of the cooked salmon soaked in as well. Very, very nice.

Which was good, because I hated the side dish I made with this.

My CSA box came with chestnuts this week, and I knew I had seen a chestnut recipe somewhere in my cookbook. Sure enough, I found a recipe for Cavolo Nero, which is basically a very dark green kale. So while perhaps not the best pairing with my fish and vegetable dish, Braised Cavolo Nero with Chestnuts it was.

I roasted the chestnuts an evening in advance -- cut an X through the thick skin of each nut and place them on a cookie sheet to roast for about 15 minutes. It's incredibly difficult to cut through the husks of the shells, and some of them I had to just toss rather than kill myself trying to cut through.

When the chestnuts come out, the flesh of the nut should have puffed up through the X making it easier to pull the shell and skin away from the nut.

In a pan, saute onion in olive oil for about 10 minutes and then add chopped pancetta (it actually calls for bacon, but I had leftover pancetta from another recipe) and continue cooking until it has released its fatty juices. Add the peeled chestnuts in and coat them with the mixture. Pour in chicken stock and continue cooking for about half an hour.

Remove the hard stems from the kale and sliver and clean the leaves. Cook this in the water clinging to the leaves, occasionally adding a little more water as necessary.

Once the kale is very tender (after maybe about 20 minutes), combine it with the chestnut mixture and flavor with salt and pepper.

I hated this. It tasted and smelled like cabbage and even the yummy chestnuts and pancetta couldn't redeem it. Epic fail.

salmon -- $10.33

fennel -- $2.48

carrots -- $1.29 (half left)

lemon -- $.89

potatoes -- $3.14 (CSA price)

Total Cost of Roast Fish with Fennel, Potatoes, and Carrots: $18.33

kale -- $1.99

onion -- $1.37 (half left)

chestnuts -- $3.14 (CSA price)

Total Cost of Braised Cavolo Nero with Chestnuts: $6.50