Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Whole-Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

A few weeks ago - was it September? - I was in Syracuse visiting my family.  Fearless Baby was with me and we decided to all go out to brunch.  My daughter had pancakes for the first time.

Why, you may well ask, was this her first time having pancakes?  Well, we aren't really a breakfast-food type of family.  We only go out to breakfast if we're entertaining guests.  When we eat breakfast at all it's usually cereal, because neither my husband nor I should be trusted near a stove before we've had our morning coffee.  We also don't care for really heavy foods and most traditional American breakfast items tend to be on the fatty side.  So breakfast foods, like pancakes and waffles and omelets tend to be special treats.

Anyway, FB had her first taste of pancakes.  She was hooked, of course.  Now, she's still young and while she's enthusiastic about trying to use a fork she's not necessarily skilled at using a fork.  She sometimes gets a little bored with Fork and resorts to using her hands.  This is why she did not get maple syrup with her pancakes.  She probably would have loved it.  She didn't need it though because she just loved pancakes.  Every day since we got back she's asked for pancakes.  After I read somewhere - probably Martha Stewart Living but who knows - that you can wrap and freeze pancakes I no longer had an excuse not to make them, so I did.

On the whole I was pretty satisfied with how these came out.  I used about three or four different recipes to figure out proportions.  I knew I wanted them to be whole wheat, so that's what I used.  I used buttermilk because buttermilk pancakes are better than not-buttermilk pancakes.  I used honey instead of sugar because honey is tasty.  My only complaint about the finished product is the scorched appearance caused by the cooking spray.  As a general rule I like cooking spray - it prevents burning without adding fat.  In this case though I think just using butter would have been better.  The cooking spray didn't affect the flavor of the final product, but it did give it kind of a dismal appearance, didn't it?

Whole-Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes (makes 8; approx. $0.25/ea)

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 tablespoons honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

2 eggs

3 tablespoons olive oil

Equipment:

• Frying pan, preferably nonstick.
• Ice cream scoop
• Spatula
• Cooking spray (see above)
• Mixing bowl

1. Coat the pan with cooking spray.
2. Combine the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.
3. Combine the buttermilk, eggs and honey in the measuring cup.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Stir until the flour is smooth.
5. Heat the pan over medium heat.
6. Use the ice cream scoop to portion out the batter.  One scoop will make one pancake.  The number of pancakes you can make at a time will depend on the size of your pan; I was only able to get one at a time.  Do not overcrowd your pan.
7. Cook the pancake on one side until bubbles form and the edges are just starting to look dry.  Flip and repeat on the other side.
8. Repeat until all the batter is used.
9. Serve hot.

Recipe: Apple, Bacon and Cheddar Muffins

It's Fall.  It's time for apples.  I know that I've mentioned this before, probably until you're absolutely nauseous, but I love apples.  At this time of year I'm just obsessed with them.  It seems like my daughter has inherited this trait because she's wanted nothing but apples to eat for a week.  I've got a full bushel of apples downstairs in my kitchen right now.  Well, I've had a full bushel.  I've been eating my way through one half bushel, which consists entirely of Empire apples.  Empires are clearly the best apple out there.  Nothing quite beats that first bite into a delicious Empire apple.  Now, I don't want to waste my delightful Empires on cooking.  Fortunately for me, my CSA farm share has been supplying a steady stream of Macs and Cortlands.  I also went apple picking again recently and filled a half-bushel bag with other varieties, some of which I can't even name, that should be good for cooking.

I made these muffins to bring on that recent apple picking expedition.  I knew that the weather would be dark and gray and unpleasant and I thought these would be just the ticket to keep us happy.  I made a veritable ton of them, because there was a large pool of potential companions on this expedition.  Of course, I didn't bring them.  I left them on the counter.  Fortunately they've kept quite well for the past few days and my husband is almost as fond of them as I am.

I do feel compelled to point out that there is not nearly enough bacon in these muffins.  I started out cooking the bacon.  I got about halfway through the package when a problem arose with the stove.  I stopped and my husband told me that there would be absolutely no more cooking on that stove, that it was a fire hazard and we were getting a pizza.  I said, "Okay," not wanting a fire hazard.  Since I was not going to be able to make the muffins, I went ahead and ate the bacon.  (Why should it go to waste?)  Then my husband solved the problem with the stove.  I was left with a dilema: I still had to make the muffins but I had half as much bacon as I needed!  How could I get that delicious bacon flavor into the muffins in sufficient quantity to be useful?  I decided to replace a little of the butter in the recipe with some of the rendered bacon fat from my first fry-up.  It worked better than I could have imagined.

Apple, Bacon and Cheddar Muffins (makes 24 muffins; approx. $0.41/ea.)

1 12-oz package beef bacon, cooked and crumbled

11 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 cups raw sugar

4 eggs

4 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour

8 teaspoons baking powder

2 cups milk

3 teaspoons vanilla

4 Cortland apples, peeled and diced

4 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese (New York cheddar if possible)

Equipment:

• Stand mixer with paddle attachment
• Enough muffin tins to add up to 24 cups
• Cooking spray
• Frying pan
• Ice cream scoop

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Spray your muffin tins with cooking spray.
2. Fry the bacon in the frying pan until crisp.  Drain on paper towels.  Reserve 3 tablespoons of rendered fat from the frying pan and put it in the stand mixer.  Crumble the bacon and try not to eat too much of it.
3. Add the butter and sugar to the stand mixer and cream until light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time.  Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
5. Combine the flour with the baking powder and salt.  Add to the bowl in three additions, alternating with the combined milk and vanilla.  Begin and end with the flour.
6. Fold in the apples, cheddar and bacon.
7. Use the ice cream scoop to dish out the batter, one scoop per muffin cup.
8. Bake 20 - 25 minutes.
9. Serve.

Recipe: Red Currant Scones

Recipe Source: DiVecchio, Jerry Anne. The New Easy Basics Cookbook. Sunset Books, Menlo Park, 1997 p. 153.

I made a pilgrimage – well, a few weeks ago now – to Ward's Berry Farm in Sharon, MA. I intended to get peaches, and quite a lot of peaches at that. I succeeded in that mission. I also found many bright shiny objects to catch my fancy, mostly of the fruit variety. I bought a bunch of gooseberries (which did in fact become jam). I also bought a bunch of red currants. I intended to make jam from them as well but I was thwarted. I told my husband what I'd purchased when I got home and he became very excited. "Now you can make red currant scones!" he exulted.

Really? I've been married to this guy since 2004 and I'm just now finding out that he's been secretly craving red currant scones all this time? Whatever. I dutifully sought out a scone recipe. Most of the recipes in my arsenal required buttermilk, which I did not have on hand. I found this recipe, though, which did not require buttermilk. I made a few minor changes and turned out the scones. They were reasonably good. I personally prefer for my baked goods to involve chocolate in some way, but they apparently really hit the spot for the Spouse. The Baby also delighted in these whole-grain treats. Unfortunately, the dog also found them to be irresistible. I don't think he really tried to resist them, because he ate a large portion of the first batch. The Spouse was so sad! When I went to the farmers' market a few days later I bought more and made this dish again, just for him.

If you're keeping track, the changes I made were the addition of the red currants (fairly obvious but I might as well state it), whole wheat flour for the all-purpose, raw sugar for granulated, and increased whipping cream to accommodate the drier nature of the whole-wheat flour.

Red Currant Scones (makes 8 scones; approx. $0.55/serving)

8 ounces whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons raw sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup butter

2 eggs

½ cup whipping cream

½ pit red currants

Equipment:

• Mixing bowl
• Pastry cutter
• 2 baking sheets

1. Preheat your oven to 400 ̊.
2. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and 3 tablespoons sugar.
3. Add the butter. Use the pastry cutter to work the butter into the dry ingredients. You're done when the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
4. Separate one of the eggs and reserve the white. Add the yolk and the other egg to the bowl and mix well.
5. Add the whipping cream and red currants. Mix until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl, which sounds like it shouldn't make sense but does eventually.
6. Divide the dough into two equal parts and put one on each baking sheet. Roll each piece into a ball and then flatten into a disc.
7. Cut each piece into quarters and separate slightly.
8. Brush with the egg white and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.
9. Bake 12 minutes. Serve.

Recipe: Egg with Mustard Sauce on Toast

Yesterday I posted about a fish dish I made with a creamy mustard sauce. I had plenty of mustard left over, so I decided to use it for another dish. I could have put it on potatoes or something like that and it would have been fine, but for some reason I've been craving eggs. I decided that this would make a great breakfast or brunch dish, and I have to say I was not displeased with the results. In fact I was so pleased that I could not wait to have it again!

Egg with Mustard Sauce on Toast (serves 1; approx. $0.62/serving)

1 slice whole wheat bread, toasted

1 egg

¼ cup (approx.) mustard sauce

Equipment:

• Frying pan
• Cooking spray

1. Lubricate the pan with the cooking spray.
2. Heat the pan over medium heat.
3. Add the egg. Cook until the egg is cooked to your desired degree of doneness – I like the yolk to be a little runny personally.
4. Heat the sauce in your microwave or in a pot on the stove.
5. Plate the toast. Top with the egg and pour the sauce over the top.
6. Serve.

Recipe: Collard Greens and Goat Cheese Quiche

Recipe Source: The Culinary Institute of America. Baking & Pastry. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2009 p. 702

I've been wanting to do this for a while. A long time ago my dad admitted to me that he loves quiche. Who knew? We certainly didn't have any quiche around the house growing up. I told him that someday I would make him a quiche. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. I don't get a chance to cook for my parents very often, and my mother ought not to eat quiche for a variety of reasons. When we had a party for out-of-town guests who came to Boston for my daughter's christening, I sensed an opportunity. This recipe seemed less grievously fatty than other quiche recipes I've seen (and used.) It also conveniently enough didn't call for any pork.

I made a few changes to the recipe. I used an old family pie crust recipe – one I can't share here because I'm pretty sure it came from a published source and I don't know what that source was. I decided to use collard greens instead of spinach because I just love collard greens. I don't know why but I do. I added a bit of paprika to the mix and some Aleppo pepper. I used pecorino Romano in place of Parmesan because that's what I keep on hand – it's much cheaper than quality Parm, and cheese oughtn't to be shelf-stable. I omitted the sun-dried tomatoes in favor of fresh raw tomatoes placed on the quiche before serving. Finally, I added some garlic, because my dad loves garlic even more than I do.

Collard Greens and Goat Cheese Quiche (serves 16 as a side dish; approx. $0.49/serving)

1 single-crust pie crust, baked blind

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bunch collard greens, trimmed, stemmed, blanched and chopped

Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper

¾ cup heavy cream

2 eggs

1 ½ ounces fresh goat cheese, crumbled

1 ounce grated pecorino Romano cheese

1 tomato, sliced

Equipment:

• Pie plate
• Sauté pan
• Large bowl
• Whisk

1. Preheat your oven to 350 ̊.
2. Heat the oil in the sauté pan over medium heat.
3. Add the onion and garlic. Sauté until translucent.
4. Add the collards. Sauté until very hot.
5. Season with the spices and salt.
6. Whisk the eggs and cream together in the large bowl.
7. Add the cheese and spinach mixture.
8. Spread the filling evenly over the crust.
9. Bake 40 – 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of the tart comes out clean.
10. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Recipe: Whole Wheat Cinnamon – Sugar Muffins

Recipe Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. The Countryman Press, Woodstock, p. 67

I've been trying to do the majority of my baking with whole wheat flour the majority of the time, and for the most part it's been working. I'm finding that I prefer the flavor and the texture of baked goods made with whole wheat flour. The only problem I really have with it is that the products come out looking like health food. They're not, but they look like they are. I mean, look at this muffin. It looks like something someone would give you and say, "Eat, it's good for you," as opposed to, "Wow, these taste great, you should try one." The thing is, they do taste great. I like them. The daughter, for whom they were made in the first place, likes them. Even the husband likes them.

I did make a few changes to the original. One of them is the whole-wheat flour. I also used raw sugar. I added just a little bit of milk to try to handle the drier nature of the whole wheat flour, and that worked fairly well. I also found that I was out of nutmeg, which made me frankly sad. I used a little allspice instead to no ill effect.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon-Sugar Muffins (makes 12; approx. $0.22/serving)

12 ¾ ounces whole wheat flour

7 ounces raw sugar

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ¼ teaspoons ground allspice

¾ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 1/3 cups milk

5 1/3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 ¾ additional ounces raw sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

4 tablespoons additional melted butter

Equipment:

• Stand mixer
• Small bowl
• Muffin tin
• Ice cream scoop.

1. Grease up your muffin tin with the lubricant of your choice, such as cooking spray or butter.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 ̊.
3. Combine the flour, 7 ounces sugar, baking powder, allspice and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer.
4. Add the eggs, milk and 5 1/3 tablespoons melted butter. Mix until evenly moistened. Lumpy batter is fine.
5. Use the ice cream scoop to portion the batter evenly between the muffin cups. Bake 20 – 25 minutes or until golden.
6. Meanwhile, combine the remaining sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.
7. Let the muffins cool just enough that you can pick them up.
8. Dip each muffin into the remaining melted butter, then into the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
9. Serve warm. They freeze nicely, wrapped in plastic wrap.

Recipe: Banana Bread

Recipe Source: DiVecchio, Jerry Anne. The New Easy Basics Cookbook. Sunset Books, Menlo Park, 1997 p. 158

This is yet another recipe in the continuing series of recipes intended to put more weight onto Fearless Baby. The doctor specifically told us not to give her fruits and vegetables by themselves, but rather to work them into baked goods to ensure that she gets enough calories. This seems foolish to me. Yes, she needs calories, but I'm just not willing to set her up for life with bad ideas about food. She likes fruits and vegetables. Why mess with that? That doesn't mean that I shouldn't work them into baked goods too, of course. I'm not opposed to giving her more calories.

So I looked for a recipe for banana bread. I'll freely admit that I've always been a little repulsed by banana bread. I just don't much care for bananas. I never did. I therefore never flagged a banana bread recipe for future use. Rather than dig through piles and piles of books and magazines, I went back to one of the first cookbooks I owned. My parents got it for me when I got my first place and I often refer to it when I'm looking for a recipe that everyone else seems to know. You know, things like banana bread.

I did make a couple of comparatively minor changes to this recipe. I used whole wheat flour for the all-purpose and I used raw sugar for the sugar. I just like the flavor of raw sugar better, and I see no reason to fill Fearless Baby up with empty calories. The result was mixed. FB likes the bread, but she'd rather have her banana in the form of, well, bananas. My husband, on the other hand, is all about the banana bread. Who knew?

Banana Bread (serves 16; approx. $0.09/serving)

2 bananas

¾ cup raw sugar

2 eggs

¼ cup butter, melted and cooled

1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

Equipment:

• Loaf pan
• Stand mixer with paddle attachment
• Large bowl

1. Lubricate the loaf pan with your choice of lubricant. I'm a cooking spray girl myself, because it gets into all the corners more reliably, but you can use whatever makes you happy.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 ̊.
3. Put the bananas (peeled, obviously) into the bowl of your stand mixer. Use the paddle to mash them; you can do this on a relatively low speed.
4. Add the sugar and increase the speed to medium-high.
5. Add the eggs and sugar. Beat until well combined.
6. Combine the remaining ingredients in the large bowl, then add them to the banana mixture. Mix until just moistened.
7. Pour the batter into your pan. Bake 55 – 60 minutes. The bread should just be pulling away from the sides of the pan.
8. Cool in the pan 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely.

Recipe: Mushroom, Cheddar and Bacon Tartlets

When I was planning my menu for our Opening Day party I had a few issues to deal with. The first issue was the setting. We needed finger foods, because the television is not in a location that makes proper dining feasible. We needed foods that could be made ahead and would not need to be re-heated, because there was no way I was going to be willing to miss even part of a game. And finally, we needed food that was appropriate to the time and place. While baseball is considered to be a summer sport, Opening Day this year was March 31. For those of you who do not live in the Northeast, it snowed on March 31. It wasn't enough snow to really count for much, but when it is snowing the last thing you want to eat is corn on the cob, you know?

Hence these tartlets. The bacon is beef bacon. Feel free to use regular pork bacon if you're able; that will bring your costs down considerably. I had originally intended to use more of the bacon but some of it burned, and so I had to re-think my strategy. The cheddar was used because we had plenty of it on hand. I like New York cheddar when I can get it. The mushrooms were plain old white button mushrooms. The crust was an old family recipe, but I can't share it here because I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere originally got it from a magazine and I can't cite the source properly. I will tell you though that I used whole wheat pastry flour in an attempt to atone slightly for the eggs, cheese and bacon.

These were decent. They were better with hot sauce.

Mushroom, Cheddar and Bacon Tartlets (makes 12; approx. $1.22/serving)

1 double-crust pie crust recipe, either homemade (best) or store-bought

5 eggs, beaten

1 egg yolk

8 ounces grated Cheddar cheese

8 ounces beef bacon

1 pound white button mushrooms, minced

Kosher salt to taste

Equipment:

• 12 tartlet pans
• Pastry brush
• Skillet
• Small bowl
• Large bowl

1. Preheat your oven to about 400 ̊.
2. Divide your crust among your tartlet pans. I prefer to press the crust into the pans, but that's probably just because I lack training and skill with pastry.
3. Dock the crusts a few times with a fork. Paint the bottom of the crust with the egg yolk.
4. Pre-bake your crusts for about ten minutes, then remove from heat and let cool. Leave the oven on.
5. Cook the bacon in batches in the skillet. As you finish browning each batch, evacuate the bacon to a plate or a pile of paper towels or something and carefully pour the grease into the small bowl. It is perfectly acceptable to snack on the bacon as you work. Wipe out the pan before proceeding; this will keep the grease from developing charred bits which will taste bitter.
6. When you have browned the bacon, pour a bit (about 2 – 3 tablespoons) of the reserved fat back into the pan. Heat over medium heat just to re-warm it.
7. Add the mushrooms and salt. Sauté until the mushrooms are softened.
8. Combine the beaten eggs in the large bowl with the cooked mushrooms and the cheese. Crumble any remaining bacon into the mixture. Mix well.
9. Portion out the filling between the twelve crusts.
10. Bake 15 – 20 minutes, until the filling is set well.
11. Serve warm or at room temperature. These worked just fine cold too.

Recipe: Banana – Chocolate Chip Muffins

I need to apologize for not posting anything new. There are a lot of reasons for that, but they all boil down to two things: time and passion. I went through a whole week where I simply did not cook. That's kind of the problem with trying to lose weight: your options seem very limited, and when you can't cook the same thing twice they seem even more limited. This is depressing and makes even trying to come up with an interesting menu for the week seem like an exercise in futility. This is coupled with a suddenly active social life, which means that time to cook has been in very short supply. Time to write about cooking has been in even shorter supply.

Now, the first issue was always going to get solved eventually. Cooking is what I do, and there is one person in the whole world that can make me want to get in the kitchen again. That one person is Fearless Baby. I'm not going to pretend that she's on a diet restricted to homemade foods entirely prepared from expensive, certified organic ingredients, but I do make an effort to limit the processed food that goes into her little body. I don't know that any of my health issues were caused by the processed foods that I frankly adored as a kid (I remember a kind of o-shaped pasta that came in a can with sauce that was probably more sugar than tomato…. I still crave those things, although I quash those cravings with Stalinist brutality) but there have been enough studies showing links between processed food and ill health later in life to make me a little concerned. I figure that if most of the time at home she gets The Good Stuff – mostly whole grains, quality vegetables, quality rBST-free milk, not a lot of sugar – then if she gets some more processed food (at a restaurant, at friends' houses, whatever) she'll probably still be okay. My husband and I wanted to give her a snack that she could eat with her hands (the only way she'll eat anything these days), that was tasty and relatively wholesome. Yes, these are muffins. Yes, they contain sugar, but it isn't a ghastly amount. Yes, the chocolate is messy. Babies are inherently messy. That's part of the process.

FB loved these muffins. So did my husband. I was less enamored of them. I don't much care for bananas, so they were never going to be my favorite. Still, the banana flavor wasn't cloying or overpowering, so they were definitely okay. In creating this recipe I worked with one that came with my muffin pan.

Banana – Chocolate Chip Muffins (makes 12; approx. $0.36/ea)

7 tablespoons butter

¾ cup raw sugar

2 eggs

2 ¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ cups dark chocolate chunks

2 bananas, roughly chopped

Equipment:

• Cooking spray
• Stand mixer with paddle attachment
• Large bowl
• Disher
• Muffin pan
• Baking tray – this is optional, but makes it unlikely that anything will accidentally overflow and burn onto your oven

1. Preheat your oven to 375 ̊. Use the cooking spray to lubricate the muffin cups.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar in the stand mixer.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
4. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) in the large bowl. Combine the milk and vanilla.
5. Add the dry ingredients and the milk in the following order: 1/3 of the dry, ½ of the milk, 1/3 dry, ½ milk, 1/3 dry. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
6. Fold in the chocolate and the bananas.
7. Portion the batter between the muffin cups using the disher.
8. Bake about 20 minutes.
9. Let cool in the pans for about half an hour, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Recipe: Tropical Breakfast Drink

Recipe Source: Olivier, Suzannah and Joanna Farrow. Juices and Smoothies. Anness Publishing, London, 2005 p. 94

So as you probably already know I've been trying to lose weight, and I've been looking for ways to do that while still having recipes to post. It isn't easy, let me tell you. I came across this drink and thought it would be a good change for me for breakfast. I didn't really think much about it. It was delicious, that much I'll give it, especially after I added the lime juice and orange flower water. There are two things that I should really mention. The first is that I kept having to fight the urge to add rum. That wouldn't be very diet-friendly, would it? I'm not even a big fan of fruity mixed drinks and baseball season hasn't started yet. (We usually drink daiquiris when the Yankees are getting blown out, which could be problematic this year given the Yankees' pitching situation. I'm just sayin'.)

The other problem was the price. Like I said, I really didn't think much about it. I threw the fruit into my cart and went on my merry way until I calculated the cost per serving. Wow. While I certainly enjoyed this dish I really think that I will need to back off on it. Maybe some frozen papaya would have been cheaper, I don't know.

Tropical Breakfast Drink (serves 1; approx. $5.78/serving)

½ pineapple, peeled and cut into chunks

½ papaya, seeded and peeled

1 mango, peeled chopped

1 tablespoon lime juice (or more to taste)

1 tablespoon orange flower water (optional; I would have preferred rose water but the orange flower water was open. You can also leave out the floral additive if you just don't care for the stuff. I won't think less of you; it just means more for me!)

Equipment:

• Blender

1. Combine all ingredients in the blender.
2. Blend to a thick liquid.
3. Drink.