Mora-Manzana Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we headed up to Rumi Loma, since that’s where we have an oven. It was a marvelous day, and we split up cooking dinner. Coral made a green bean casserole. Then, Elizabeth made mashed potatoes with a mushroom gravy. Alex was put in charge of stuffing. Tim and Jesse worked together to make macaroni and cheese. (I must admit that I was sad that it was creamy mac-and-cheese. In my opinion, that’s just blasphemy.) Then, I was in charge of baking a pie. Since we lacked both pumpkin and pecans, I decided that apple was the best option. However, that seemed a bit boring so I added in mora (blackberries).

Mora-Manzana Pie

3 cups sliced apple

2 cups blackberries

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

2 Tbsp. flour

½ cup sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

2 Tbsp. browned butter

First, prepare your choice of crust. Then, mix all of the ingredients except for the butter. Layer the mixture into the crust. Next, pour the butter over the pie. Finally, lay the top crust on top. (I suggest lattice.) Then, bake until done, and eat.

C is for Cookies

Last week would've been a good week for me to be at Dacie's. Alas, I'm grown up now and have to buy my own ingredients.

I was running out of ingredients right and left. Led to some amazing Mint Double Chocolate cookies when Lauren came over though. They're like thin mints. Only not dry. And with nuts. And I just ate four of them.

Mint Double Chocolate Cookies

inspired by Dorie's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

1.25 cups flour

.75 cups coca powder

1 teaspoon salt I know it's a lot, but it's actually an advisable amount

.75 teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks butter led to greasy cookies, next time I'll use 1.5 sticks and then 1 if that'll work later

1 cup sugar

.66 cups light brown sugar

1 teaspoon mint extract

2 eggs

12 ounces chocolate chips

1 cup chopped nuts. I used walnuts this time, just crumbled them in my hands. Pecans would be delicious too.

Preheat oven to 375º.

Mix the flour, salt, and baking soda.

Cream in butter and then sugars.

Mix in mint extract and eggs.

Fold in chocolate and nuts.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before you eat them. They're too fragile when they first come out of the oven. Have milk on hand for dunking.

Makes about 2 dozen good sized cookies. The dough freezes well. The four cookies I ate today, popped from the plate where I froze them last week.

Pastries make a good lunch

I'm loving kale. It's my green veggie to learn this year.

I'm less than convined that what I've made is Jamaican. Kale just doesn't scream Carribean to me. But I want to record what I did so I might be able to do something similar in the future.

Kale Patties

I'd accidently opened a can of white beans and needed to use them. A search on Foodgawker turned up Jamaican Style Curried Kale and White Bean ‘Patties’ and with my newly discovered interest in kale I couldn't not try them. So I went to the grocery store.


Now I like my new grocery store. It's half the size of my reservation grocery store (and that one was small) but it's in a multi-ethnic neighborhood and stocks all sorts of amazing things. I can get pastries from 3 different world regions, but I couldn't find puff pastry. So I looked around the internet and found this recipe to use for crust.


Whatever it is, it's good. The baked ones are great to take to school for lunch and I'm trying freezing them in the pre-baked stage to see how that works. Because who doesn't love a good homemade frozen dinner? 


So now then. My modified recipe.

Filling

1 bunch kale 
Salt
1 can white Beans

½ Tbsp vegetable oil

Pinches of crushed red pepper
1 tsp minced or grated garlic
1 tsp minced or grated ginger
1/2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp curry powder
1/8 tsp turmeric




Blanch the kale. (Bring a large enough pot of water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt to the water if you like. The original uses a teaspoon of vinegar to help the kale stay bright green. Your choice there. While the water is heating, chop up the kale. Once the water boils, drop the kale in, let it cook for a minute, maybe less. Then drain and wash the kale in cold water to stop the cooking.)


Meanwhile drain and wash the beans.


Find a skillet large enough to hold everything and heat up the oil. Cook the crushed red pepper, ginger, garlic for ~30 seconds. Then add the curry and tumeric. Stir everything for a couple of seconds then add the beans and kale. Mix it all up. Turn off the stove. Now's a good time to turn on the oven. Preheat to 400º.


Got it?


Crust


2 cups wheat flour
2 cups white flour
1 Tablespoon curry powder
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup water


Mix the dry ingredients.
Cut in the butter.
Stir in the oil and water to make a nice dough.


And putting it together


You're going to take small balls of the crust. Roll them out into pretty circles. Fill them. Close them. Bake them. All that jazz.
One method: form the crust into a log and then cut it into 20 pieces.
Or just make balls the size of a small scoop of icecream. (Ping pong ball size? Larger than a walnut, smaller than a tennis ball.)
It's pretty if you brush the top of the patties with a beaten egg. Just seems like I then waste the rest of the egg.
Anyway, bake at 400º for 20 minutes or so. Serve piping hot.


Enjoy!





Based on a couple of recipes.

When Life Gives You Sliced Lemons...

About a month ago, mom came home from a church function with a huge container of leftover sliced lemons. She knew that I loved lemons and wondered if I could use them to bake anything. The problem was that they were sliced. Can't really juice them. Can't really zest them. (At least not without cutting up my fingers.) Luckily, like any good Kitchen Window reader, I remembered preserved lemons from NPR. This weekend, the lemons were ready, but I still had to figure out what to do with them.

Preserved lemons are pretty versatile and can simply be added to a number of dishes. However, I wanted to try a recipe that actually called for them. After looking for preserved lemon recipes, I very quickly learned that a Moroccan tagine was the way to go.

Many tagines are either chicken or lamb based. Although I am not vegetarian and not averse to cooking with meat, I don't really enjoy cooking meat, so I wanted something different. However, the vegetarian options I found didn't look quite like what I wanted. So despite having never tried a tagine before, I combined 3 or 4 recipes to come up with a combination that sounded good to me. This is roughly that recipe.

*Note: There may be no salt in the recipe, but it turns out quite salty because of the salt in the lemons.

Red Potato Tagine

1.75 pounds red skin potatoes
1 small onion grated and squeezed dry
1/3 cup grated tomato
1/3 large onion thinly sliced
3/4 red pepper sliced
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 gloves garlic
1 tsp ginger
1 preserved lemon (I wasn't sure what that meant. I used about the equivalent of 1/2 a whole lemon)
2 Tbsp parsley
1 Tbsp cilantro

1. Boil the potatoes for 3 minutes. Then, pour out the water. Thickly slice the potatoes into a bowl of cool water.
2. Saute the grated onion in olive oil in a 2 quart saucepan for 3 minutes.
3. Add tomato and spices, and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Add potatoes, onion, and red pepper and cook for 2 more minutes. Mix everything together well.
5. Pour in 1 3/4 cup water. Bring to a boil. Then, cover and bring down to a low simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Add parsley, cilantro, and preserved lemon. (To use the preserved lemon: Remove from jar. Rinse with cold water. Coarsely chop. It will be quite soft and salty.) Cover again and simmer for 25 more minutes.
7. You may uncover and boil a bit more to remove some of the excess water.

Lamingtons

I discovered these Australian delights during freshman year. They were so good that I made a second batch only a couple of weeks later. When you consider that I'm not much of a cake fan, that's rather impressive. Now, this is my go-to cake recipe, whether I am making lamingtons or just need a birthday cake. It is quite butter rich causing it to be dense enough to hold up to coating in chocolate and coconut for absolute deliciousness.


When I first made these, I described them to my friend Kristen over dinner. Of course, this meant that she had to try one. Once I brought one to her, she laughed in surprised. Although she had never eaten a lamington before, she recognized it from Possum Magic, an Australian children's book. The book has an illustration of the main character, a possum, eating a gigantic lamington!

I have never made a full recipe, since I try to accommodate whatever size cake pan I happen to have. Thus, the measurements that I provide are a bit imprecise. If you are worried about exactness, check out the recipe at NPR.

Lamingtons
adapted from Greg Patent on NPR

Cake

just under 1 1/4 cups bleached all-purpose flour

a bit less than 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 stick + a tad salted butter, at room temperature

1 (barely overfilled) cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs

3/4 cup whole milk (I used skim in this case, and it turned out fine. However, I usually choose to buy a small bottle of whole milk for this recipe.)

Chocolate sauce

2 cups confectioners' sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons salted butter, melted

1/3 cup boiling water

2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut

To make the cake, adjust an oven rack to the lower third position and preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 9 x 2–inch baking pan, dust it with flour, and knock out the excess flour.

Whisk the flour and baking powder together in a medium bowl.

Beat the butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Add 1/4 cup of the sugar and the vanilla and beat for 30 seconds. While beating, gradually add the remaining sugar. Scrape the bowl and beater, then beat for 5 minutes on medium-high speed. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with the milk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and beating only until smooth. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and pulls away slightly from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in its pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then cover the cake pan with a wire rack and invert the two. Remove the pan, cover the cake with another rack, and invert the cake again to cool completely right side up.

Drape the cake loosely with a kitchen towel and leave at room temperature overnight.

To make the chocolate sauce, in a medium metal bowl whisk together the confectioners' sugar, cocoa, butter, and boiling water until smooth. Set the bowl into a pan of very hot water to keep the sauce fluid. Spread the coconut in a shallow dish or pie plate. Drop a piece of cake into the chocolate sauce and use two long-tined forks to turn the cake quickly in the sauce to coat all surfaces. Lift the cake out of the sauce, letting excess sauce drip back into the bowl, and transfer the cake to the bowl of coconut. Use your fingers to sprinkle the cake with coconut, rolling it around to coat all surfaces well. Remove the cake from the coconut and set it on a wire cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining cake. Leave the cakes on the wire racks to dry for 1 to 2 hours before serving.

Lemony Geometric Goodness

"A triangle of pie is the best way ever discovered to round out a square meal," according to the Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook.

Ever since I received this cookbook from Nana, I've meant to try a recipe. However, with a table of contents with everything from custard pies to cake pies to a whole chapter devoted just to pie toppings, picking a place to begin is not easily done. Thankfully, my friend Brooke has raved about lemon chess pies for the past two years. She couldn't believe that I was a Southerner who had never tasted one. Well, I righted that by baking one earlier this week.

And I have to agree with Brooke. Lemon chess pies really are delicious (though fairly sweet), and Southerners and Northerners alike need to try one.

Lemon Chess Pie a la the Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook:

Unbaked 9 inch pie shell (*I made a regular shortening and butter crust rather than our family's traditional oil. I also added a bit of lemon zest to the dough)
2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. cornmeal
4 eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
4 Tbsp. lemon zest
1/4 cup lemon juice

Combine sugar, flour, and cornmeal in large bowl. Toss lightly with fork to mix. Add eggs, butter, milk, lemon zest and lemon juice. (*Note: You're adding dairy and lemon juice together, so of course, it will curdle, but don't worry, it still tastes great.) Beat with rotary or electric beater until smooth and thoroughly blended. Pour into pie shell.

Bake in moderate oven (375 degrees F) 35 to 45 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cut pie while warm.

(Two last notes: It is probably best to refrigerate any extras rather than leaving on the counter indefinitely. Second, the cookbook recommends serving with unsweetened whipped cream. Mom, Dad and I thought that the pie did just fine without it.)

Condiments

I believe that what you wear should tell a story. Right now I'm wearing a tank top and a skirt. It's my first real tank top, bought at the mall around with my friend Allison. Skirt, one I made from a favored pattern. Even though it's the wrong type of fabric for the pattern, I knew I wanted to make it work.

I like what's dressing up my food to have a story too. The best stories come when you make it yourself. If food is your clothing, then condiments are the jewelry, adding the sparkle that sets everything off. I haven't tried ketchup--it requires more tomatoes and canning than I have, but I'll venture into other condiments.

Today I made mayonnaise for the first time. The process of making it accentuates how it is FAT. All the more reason to only have a small amount at a time. I think the recipe below makes about a cup of mayo, but I'm not certain. At one point when the blender didn't look like anything was happening I took a step over to the sink to rinse something. Mayo explosion! Be warned.

Mayonnaise in my Blender

(adapted from More With Less)

Whirl in blender:

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon paprika

Add 1 Tablespoon lemon juice

Now for the FAT!

Start your blender. Carefully remove cover (or just cap if you can pour in) and SLOWLY pour in

1/4 cup of oil. (I used olive oil.)

Then add 1 Tablespoon vinegar. (I used white vinegar.)

Finally, and still slowly, add another 3/4 cup of oil.

Nana's Mustard

I haven't made this in the new apartment yet, but it's only a matter of time. It's great sweet-sour, spicy mustardy deliciousness.

Mix: 1/4 c. ground mustard
1/4 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
Dash of salt

Heat to boiling: About 1/3 c. brown vinegar

Stir in enough vinegar into dry ingredients to right consistency.

Add: 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric

Let season one day to develop flavor.

Note: Turmeric is a strong yellow dye, so be careful about getting it on your clothes.