Bread, Soup and happiness

Sometimes, that's about all that's needed to put a smile on the face! A bowl of hot soup, some crusty bread to mop it up and soon life is all goodness.


I was wandering around Columbus Foodie's insanely fun blog - brimming with a wide variety of recipes that I could pick from for T&C VII. Just as it seemed like I was going to drown in eternal indecision, I saw this recipe for beer batter bread. Whoa! That sounded really delicious. Plus I've been hankering for more baking lately, so this sounded perfect. And the plan was to try this recipe out right away - how insane would it be if I posted a recipe for an event a couple of weeks in advance? Do things like that ever happen?!!

The Abster was coming over for dindin and said she was hankering for a soup. And when I mentioned bread, I could pretty much hear her jumping around on the other end of the phone line! But wait ... she *hates* onions! Well, the recipe could be reworked to use garlic instead, can't go wrong with that! And then she said she wanted swirly soup. Hmm ... I was kind of hoping to kill 2 food events with one meal here :) If we made a spicy soup instead, I could totally ship it off for March's edition of No Croutons Required!

Yay for food agendas :)

We poked around several cookbooks and the Pupp found a really simple and elegant spicy soup - a plethora of veggies, some marjoram, kicked up with some cayenne ... sounded pretty good!

We also ended up reworking the bread recipe to use whole wheat flour. And we made some muffins and scones instead of a big loaf - worked out pretty well.

Beer Batter Muffins and Scones
Mmm ... garlic! Mmm ... cheese!

Servings: 12-14 muffins/scones

2 heads of garlic - peeled and chopped into bits (not minced, unless you don't want to feel the yummy sticky garlic chunks in your mouth!)
3 cups white whole wheat flour
1 T olive oil
3 T sugar
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 cup grated light cheese
1 12 ounce beer (we used amber ale)
3 T butter - melted

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Heat the oil in a large skillet and saute the garlic until lightly browned.

Sift the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder into a bowl.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add in the cheese, beer and garlic.
Stir/knead until the mixture is just moist and well-mixed.

Grease palms with cooking spray before taking handfuls of the mixture and plopping them onto a greased baking tray.
Another option is to drop dollops of it in a muffin pan.
(We did both!)

Drizzle 1.5 T of butter over the muffins/scones and set in the oven.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove the muffins/scones, drizzle the remaining 1.5 T of butter over them.
Set back in the oven for about 12-14 minutes till they are lightly browned.
A toothpick or knife inserted into the muffin should come out clean.

Cool the muffins and scones on a wire rack.

Opinion?

Weeeeeeee! Enough garlic to chase all those vampires away! The scones were chewy and tasty. We did think that maybe they needed a little zing - think we'll add some minced jalapeno next time around. And they tasted better today than yesterday - seemed moister than ever! And the beer definitely gave the bread a yeasty flavour - very appetizing.

Thanks Becke for this recipe, we're definitely going to try it out again!

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The Drunk Muffin
Photo Courtesy: Abbie

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While the bread was baking, we started the soup. We were a little dubious about how hearty this soup would be - it didn't seem to ask for a lot of ingredients, but my fears were totally unfounded. Simple is good, especially in soups.

Spicy Chunky Vegetable Soup
*so* fresh and happy!

Servings: 4

1 red onion - chopped
4-5 cloves garlic - finely chopped
1 small carrot - diced
1 large potato - diced
4 oz green peas (we used frozen petite peas)
2 cups of drained tomatoes
1 L reduced sodium vegetable broth
2 scallions - sliced diagonally into thin pieces
1 T butter
1.5 t dried marjoram
2 t cayenne
salt to taste

Saute the onion in butter till browned.
Add the vegetable broth and bring to a boil.
Reduce to a simmer and add the tomatoes, garlic and marjoram. Cook for about 15 minutes.
Stir in the carrots, peas and potatoes along with the cayenne and salt.
Cover partially and cook on medium for 10+ minutes till the potatoes are cooked.

Opinion?

The recipe had likened this soup to minestrone, but described a much lighter flavour. We didn't quite grok that when we first read it, but one spoonful and we knew exactly what that was about. The consistency was just right, the drained tomatoes were *perfect*, the soup tasted *so* damn fresh! Like if I was running through a garden and noshing on all the veggies! Well ... no, not quite like that. But you know what I mean - it just felt ... so right. And spicy too.

Eat (bread), drink (soup), make merry!

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Off this goes to Ms. Tinned Tomatoes for No Croutons Required.

Many thanks to Nicole for another fun edition of T&C.

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And I'll leave you with a snapshot of the craziest cat around hereplace :)

Weekend eats ...

So, the best news ever - Vodka's tumor came out to be a Grade 1 - which, apparently, is the best thing to hope for when it comes to mast cell tumors - so no more surgery or treatment - Yay! The countdown is still on - 6 more days before his sutures and staples can be removed. 33 - that's how many staples there are in his franken-scar! But the monkey is a total sport, he's holding up really well - though he keeps wandering around wondering why he can't seem to find any ball to play with! :)

(Photo Courtesy: Stephanie & Shawn of Dog-e-Central)

Obviously, the occasion called for some treats - I was hoping to bake something totally human-grade, but Vodka-palatable too :) After some poking around, I found the perfect recipe to work with - Suganya's vegan lemon poppy seed cookies!

I reworked these to use vegetable oil instead of margarine (and cut that by over half) and threw in a bunch of ginger - it actually worked really well.




I think these lemon-ginger cookies should go to Sunita for her fabulous Think Spice event. The theme this month is ginger - I've used ginger in several recipes in the last few weeks, but these cookies were strongly defined by the ginger flavor - enough to be my submission of choice.

Ginger-Lemon-Poppy Seed Cookies
Adapted from Suganya's vegan cookies

Servings: 13

1 cup pastry flour
1.5 T corn flour
3 T vegetable oil
2 T lemon juice
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2" ginger
1/4 t cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 F

Sift the flours, cinnamon and salt into a bowl.
Grind the ginger in a processor and separate out the chaff to extract the juice.

Mix the ginger juice with the brown sugar till the sugar dissolves - let this sit for about 10 minutes. I was hoping to substitute for the effect of ginger crystals by letting the zing of the ginger and the earthy sweetness of the brown sugar mix into each other - I think this is what really gave the flavor to the cookies!

Beat the oil with the lemon and ginger juices till blended.
Fold the flour mixture in gently, constantly stirring - maybe adding a few drops of water if needed for consistency.
Knead the dough and form small 1" balls.
Grease a baking sheet and flatten the dough balls onto it.
Bake for about 17-18 minutes till the edges of the cookies start to brown - the cookies may look underdone, but that's the time to yank them out! :)
Cool on a wire rack.

Eat :)


Since I'm still working through a mountain of apples from PO, I figured this might be the time to use up a couple of those and bake some more. So, I ended up with a bunch of apple-honey cookies too!

Apple Honey Cookies (Vegan!)
In honor of that Tasty Palettes girl :)

Servings: 13 (Yes, a baker's dozen :))

1 braeburn apple
1 cup Pastry flour
1 T Corn flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
3 T honey
1 t vanilla
1.5 T port
3 T vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Mix flour, corn flour, salt and cinnamon and sift into a bowl.
Grind the apple up in a food processor till smooth to a pulp.
Cream the apple, oil, honey, port and vanilla extract till blended.
Fold in the flour mixture, a few tablespoons at a time.

Grease a baking sheet with oil spray (or use a nonstick sheet).
Take about a tablespoon of the dough, roll it into a ball and flatten it onto the baking sheet.
Repeat this with the rest of the dough, leaving about 1" gap between the cookies.
Bake for about 25-28 minutes till the edges are browned.
Cool on a wire rack.

Notes for the future:

One thing I would do differently the next time around is use margarine or butter and maybe use honey crisp apples - the cookies turned out chewy, but seemed like they could use a little more shortening or oil. Also, I think cooling the dough before making the cookies might be a good idea.

This troubleshooting guide might come in useful in the future :)





So, this weekend's meals included another round of upma - this time, the simple onion kind - lots of green chillies, ginger and onions - it made for the perfect breakfast food!

Questing for the perfect Banana Bread ...

I'm on the eternal quest for the perfect AND healthy banana nut bread recipe - the bread I baked for LisaBee's bachelorette party was pretty good, but I'm trying to make it even moister without having to use loads of butter, in fact I want *very* little butter. But I want it moist. And reasonably light. And flavorful. And nutty. Lofty aspirations, eh? :)

Well, this attempt was definitely a step in the right direction! In fact, this might be it! I might have to retire on this quest and move onto a different one :) The fun thing is that I've totally gotten back into baking - not sure if it was because of the plethora of frozen overripe bananas sitting in my fridge or my messing up of the last Pioneer Organics order that resulted in about 20 apples that I need to use up or just the fact that turning on the oven makes the house warmer :) Whatever be the reason, I'm loving it. And this time, I'm definitely loving the result!

Banana Nut Spice Bread

Light on the fat, NOT on the flavor!

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (another PCC discovery!)
1/2 cup of brown sugar
3 T honey
2 cups of super ripe mashed bananas (yes, I went overboard with the bananas, but it totally worked!)
2 T vegetable oil
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 t vanilla extract
1 t salt
1 T baking soda
2 large eggs (or egg substitute :))
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease a 9x5 loaf pan.

Beat the oil, sugar, baking soda, salt cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla in a bowl until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time (or, like in this case, the egg substitute - 1/4 cup at a time).
Next come the bananas and honey. By now, the mixture should be smooth and creamy.
Now start adding the flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, folding it in till blended.
Finally toss in the nuts and mix.
Now pour the batter into the greased pan and let it sit for about 10 minutes. I picked up this hint from one of my fave books on baking Whole Grain Baking that my sis turned me onto. Letting the batter sit seems to result in a much moister, fluffier bread - that makes me happy! :)
Ok, now stick the pan in the oven for 45 minutes. Lay a piece of foil over the pan and let it bake for another 10 minutes.
Now do the usual does-the-toothpick-come-clean? thing - Not done yet? Don't panic! It might take a few more minutes in the oven to get the inside completely done :)
Once done, let the cake cool in the pan for 10-12 minutes before tipping it onto a cooling rack.

Slice it. Taste it.

Wooo Hooo Hoooo!!!! This is good, really good! I feel like I've finally hit that balance I wanted - I had tried this with several substitutes - apple sauce made it too dry, sour cream made it too heavy, but this buttermilk thing seems to have worked great, even with the egg substitute! And the cinnamon+nutmeg was the perfect amount of spice to complement the banana+honey flavors!

Ok, I'm shipping this off to Baking History's Bread Baking Day #04 as my submission for 'Bread and Spices' :)

Spicy eggplant!

Eggplant is one of those weird vegetables - it seems to take a lot of thinking to find the "right" recipe for it. And it either turns out fabulous or really crappy, no in between!

I was looking for a side to go with some dosas a few days ago, and realized I had some really fresh indian eggplant waiting to be cooked up. After much dithering, I decided to go with a simple, straightforward recipe - stuffed & baked. After slicing off the tops of the little eggplants, I made a cross cut lengthwise in each of those - for filling with the stuffing. I had some sambar powder that I'd made a few days ago - seemed like the perfect filling. I loaded up the eggplants with the powder+salt, spritzed them with some oil spray and baked them for about 15 minutes at 400 F. For the first time ever, I garnished these with some chopped fennel - the combination of flavors was awesome!


Hmm ... this is an odd picture, these look more like dates than eggplants!!! :)