Chocolately goodness

While I really enjoy baking and cooking for myself, I'd say that about 90% of the time, I'd rather be cooking for friends, family, or anyone else. I'm sure it has something to do with a desire to please other people, stemming from various insecurities, inevitably leading back to Freud, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't that seem to be the case every time? Anyways, whenever I'm planning a dinner party or bringing food to a potluck, I spend quite a long time trying to come up with the perfect menu or dish--something that everyone will enjoy, so no one goes away hungry, or tells me they would have loved to try something if only it didn't include x, y, or z.

In baking, this isn't usually a problem. I can almost always guess if a recipient is a raisin-hater, or doesn't like nuts in their chocolate chip cookies, or prefers delicate crisp cookies to thick, rich, chewy ones. Last week, though, I faced a problem that I never really thought to anticipate: a gluten allergy. I have to admit, developing this kind of allergy is my worst nightmare, since eating a good slice of crusty, chewy, slightly sour bread (or pizza crust!) is basically my idea of nirvana.

Luckily, though, despite my limited experience making gluten-free food, I'm quite experienced in reading about making it, thanks to Gluten-Free Girl and other gluten allergy and celiac cooking blogs! While I never needed to make any of the recipes on these blogs, I always found it inspiring that these cooks, when faced with a seemingly impossible challenge, rose to the occasion and create delicious, inspired food that isn't "lacking" anything at all!

So, when I brought a tupperware container of my family's famous banana bread to choir rehearsal last week, and one of the singers politely declined, citing a gluten allergy as his excuse, I knew just what to do! Less than an hour later, I had come up with my very own gluten free brownie recipe, and was ready to get baking. The fact that these brownies were enjoyed not just by my gluten-free friend, but by everyone in the choir (one woman claiming that they are the best brownies she's ever had, gluten free or otherwise!), proves that what may seem like a limitation at first, can really become an opportunity to make something delicious and make everyone happy!

Gluten free brownies, with toffee and toasted walnuts
If you need these to be gluten free, make sure you ensure that your chocolate is safe for celiac and people with gluten allergies, because most chocolate isn't. If gluten content doesn't matter to you, I'm sure you could substitute regular all purpose/plain flour for the buckwheat.

200 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped, divided into 150 g and 50 g portions
125 g (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1 cup light brown sugar
2/3 cup ground almonds
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
15 Werthers toffees, or 1/3 cup chopped Heath bar
1/3 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/160 degrees C. Butter an 8x8" square baking pan.
Melt butter and 150 g chocolate together (microwave or stovetop), set aside to cool in a large bowl. Meanwhile, whisk ground almonds, buckwheat flour, salt, and baking soda together in a small bowl. Whisk brown sugar into the chocolate mixture, then vigorously whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until the mixture is emulsified (the batter will look very smooth, and will pull away from the sides of the bowl). Stir in dry ingredients, toffee, and walnuts. Pour into prepared baking pan, and bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely before cutting. These are also great after chilling in the fridge for an hour or so. Enjoy!

Comfort, redefined

In case you didn't know, I've been a vegetarian (sometimes "pescatarian") for the past six years. That is, until two months ago, when I resolved to whole-heartedly embrace the gastronomic possibilities of animal flesh. Although it took a couple weeks to get used to, I'm having a lot of fun in my return to the omnivorous world!

For the past few years, I've had no problem cooking meat for my family and friends. I whipped up (to name a few) grilled skirt steak with salsa verde, filet mignon with mushroom cream sauce, and roast pork tenderloin with mustard and garlic breadcrumbs--I just refused to eat taste any of them. But my days of green bean and bread dinners are over. No more asking my mom to taste sauces (and having to decipher her sometimes vague comments into instructions for improvement). I'm eating meat, and pretty much loving it.

I definitely don't regret having been a vegetarian. It's certainly motivated me to be a more creative cook, since I couldn't rely on meat for protein and flavor (ah, bacon, you hide in so many otherwise-veggie dishes...). I'm sure I'll continue to eat a ton of vegetarian food too; my decision to switch teams certainly had nothing to do with being bored of the food I was eating!

But now that I am eating meat again, I get so excited about even the simplest meals. I had a chicken, lettuce, and tomato sandwich a few days ago (my first chicken sandwich in six years!), and looked forward to eating it all morning! I'm just thrilled to be able to revisit all the classic meat-based dishes that I haven't been able to eat for so long.

For example, a few days ago, I got a huge craving for cooking (and eating!) spaghetti with meatballs. It started off with reading about the meatballs at the San Francisco restaurant A16, and escalated into full-blown obsession when I re-read this post about Ina Garten's version on Smitten Kitchen. Yum.

So last night I cooked up a feast for myself and my friends Kathryn and Vickie. There was salad. There was spaghetti. There was wine. There was cheesecake with cinnamony golden syrup banana topping. Oh, and there were glorious meatballs, made with the best ground meats from ELizabeth King in Fulham (near where I babysit). Again, YUM.

It's things like this that really reaffirm my decision to switch back to meat. Of course, there are so many vegetarian pasta sauces that are absolutely delicious; but meatballs and tomato sauce and pasta are just a match made in heaven. To some, the rich flavor, pillow-y light texture, and pure gastronomic comfort that one experiences when eating this dish might be something to take for granted. To them, I'd say, give up eating meat for six years, and then come back to this dish. Only then will you really understand how great it is.

Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen's adaptation of Ina Garten's recipe. The only thing I changed was to soak my breadcrumbs in about an equal amount of milk for 15 minutes or so, before mixing the meatballs together.

When life gives you mediocre fruit, you make spiced balsamic plum jam!

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying even harder than usual to be frugal. I've been packing a sandwich for lunch, eating oatmeal for breakfast, and usually having pasta for dinner. I enjoy eating all three of those things, and I've been able to vary the vegetables and sauces that I use, so that I'm not totally bored. One thing I've missed, however, is fruit! I usually eat tons and tons of fruit. Apples, bananas, grapes, mango, grapefruit...anything, really! But fruit can be expensive, and in an effort to cut back, I haven't bought as much as usual this month.

The day I was drinking an iced coffee in Starbucks, though, and wanted fruit so badly that I sprung for the £4 fruit salad, I knew things had gone far enough. It was fruit shopping spree time.

Wandering around my local Sainsbury's, I grabbed some of everything that was on sale. Braeburns, white grapefruit, mixed boxes of green and red seedless grapes, and lastly, on a whim, a box of plums on sale for a pound. Now, I enjoy a good juicy plum when they're in season, but I don't usually buy them year-round because they tend to be rather mealy. But for some reason, I wasn't going to let that stop me this time. Lo and behold, when I tasted one of those plums a couple days ago, it was dry and nearly flavorless. Serves me right for buying out of season!

So what does one do with tasteless fruit? Well, in my experience, almost anything will taste decent if it's stewed with some sugar and a little acid like lemon juice to brighten things up. Yes, of course jams and compotes are best made with the best fruit (as all things, really), but it's a good way to salvage some plums that I honestly wouldn't have eaten otherwise.



This doesn't really require a real recipe, so I'll just give it to you in layman's terms. I cut the offending specimens (5 small plums) into smallish pieces, and tossed them in a small saucepan on medium-low heat with a quarter cup of sugar, a couple tablespoons of honey, about half a cup of water and some cinnamon. I cooked this mixture until it was jammy textured and reduced quite significantly. Then, lacking a lemon, I stirred in about a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, and poured it all into a clean jam jar I had stashed in my cupboard. Voila! Homemade, rather tasty spiced balsamic plum jam for my yogurt or toast! I imagine it would also go well with roast pork, and maybe some other savory dishes.



P.S. I should add that my one attempt at sterilizing jam jars was about five years ago, and it was thoroughly unsuccessful. My friends who gobbled up their summertime raspberry peach jam right away (which, luckily, was most of them) were fine, but the jar I stashed in my pantry was moldy after two weeks and had to be tossed out. Since then, I've gone the route of small batches and immediate consumption. Someday soon I'll make another canning attempt, but definitely not in my current (abysmal) kitchen...

The Simple Life

I wouldn't exactly say that I'm in a cooking rut. I prefer the idea of a period of self-imposed pseudo-asceticism. I'm not talking about any of these scary 'cleanses' that celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow always seem to be talking about. No, it's just that I've eaten pretty much the same thing every day for the past week or so. Boring? Perhaps. Cheap? Absolutely. Time consuming? No way. The perfect recipe for a spring break full of paper-writing and studying!

I start out every morning with a cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal, and sometimes a banana (I know--variety!). Lunch is a cheddar/tomato/mustard sandwich or a tuna/tomato sandwich on whole wheat bread. Thrilling. Now, this is where it gets really exciting, because for dinner, I have two options: either the sandwich which I didn't eat for lunch that day, or pasta with fresh tomato sauce (made from--surprise--the same tomatoes that I use for my sandwiches!).



This is actually a really great basic pasta recipe to have in your repertoire, especially if you're a student looking for cheap and easy dinner options. It's open to endless variation, too; you can literally add anything you have on hand that you think goes well wit tomatoes (and what doesn't?). That includes, to start, olives, capers, mushrooms, cooked chicken, green beans, tuna...you get the picture.



Put some well-salted pasta water on to boil. Then, simply dice up a couple tomatoes (or one large one), removing the seeds if you feel like it, and mince a small clove of garlic. Heat up some olive oil in a pan on medium heat, and toss in the tomatoes, garlic, and some salt (and other ingredients, if you're using them). Cook enough pasta for one person, and meanwhile continue to cook the tomatoes until they start to soften, and the skin pulls away from the tomato flesh. Chop up some basil (if you have it) and grate some cheese. When the pasta is just about done, drain it (reserving a bit of pasta water), and add it to the sauce pan with the reserved water. Add a bit of butter for a little extra richness, and cook together for a few minutes, until the sauce is the right consistency and the pasta finishes cooking. Toss in the basil and cheese, and devour!

Sweet, crunchy sunshine

Spring is in the air! I woke up this morning with the sun shining through the window, and feeling overheated underneath the comforter--sure signs of winter's end. I spent the day washing up dishes from last night's dinner party (where I served cauliflower soup with hazelnut and turmeric, goat cheese tart, and vanilla bean panna cotta, made with agar instead of gelatin, which sadly failed to set up) and lounging outside in the sun, reading a racy historical fiction novel about a female artist in 16th century Florence. Amazing.

The sunshine is also a good sign that it's high time to swap out my standard oatmeal breakfast for a cooler treat: Greek yogurt with homemade granola.



Oats are a great way to start the day because they have a low glycemic index (basically meaning they're packed with fiber), so they keep you going strong until lunch. With the addition of protein, in the form of milk or yogurt, and some sliced banana (a must), you have a healthy, delicious breakfast that seriously can't be beat (especially served alongside a steaming mug of Monmouth coffee).

And, as easy as it is to go to the store and buy a box of granola, I have to advocate making your own. Not only is it 1000 times tastier, it's also better for you, hands down (do you really want to know how much sugar and oil and other even worse things go into that innocent box?). Make it once, figure out what you liked about the recipe and what you feel could be changed, and customize it to your taste! I've snacked on a fair amount of the freshly-baked granola for dessert tonight, and I'm still excited about having it over yogurt for breakfast tomorrow. Seriously--make it now! It's dead easy, and delicious.

Granola

This recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawson's Feast; however, I first came across it on Orangette. Nigella uses Lyle's Golden Syrup (sooooo delicious! It's like the consistency of honey, but tastes like caramel) and Molly uses brown rice syrup--I've made, and loved both! This time, though, I didn't have applesauce or ginger, so I cut them out (and added a 1/4 cup water to the liquid ingredients instead). This is my adjusted version. It's a real winner!

1/2 cup golden syrup (substitute brown rice syrup or light brown sugar)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
5 cups rolled oats
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup slivered or sliced almonds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/2 cup sesame seeds
optional: 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut, 1 cup dried fruit

Heat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, or 150 degrees Celsius. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

Whisk together golden syrup, honey, water, sugar, salt, and oil. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, stir in oats, nuts, and seeds, and coconut, if you're using it.

Spread the raw granola onto the baking sheets in a thin, even layer. If you have extra, bake it in two batches, rather than making the layer too thick (I wouldn't go more than 1/2 inch thick). Bake 25 minutes, then stir. Bake another 20-30 minutes, until the granola is dark golden brown. Cool thoroughly, stirring frequently (however, the less frequently you stir, the larger the chunks of granola. So, if you're a fan of big bunches of oats, stir sparingly).

Store in a large ziplock bag, or an airtight tupperware. Enjoy with milk or yogurt, or on it's own!

How to make friends, and how to get fat (or so I'm told)

Today I'm going to share with you a recipe that has a bit of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde about it. While some extol its virtues, others run away in terror. Or so I'm told. I really only see one side of the argument, and I'll let you figure out which.

The recipe I've described is for the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies EVER, and I suppose now you want me to explain to you why anyone would ever have a good thing to say about them.

Well, I made the dough for these cookies on Friday afternoon, and baked them in several batches for my neighbors and for my class on Monday afternoon. My friends on my corridor practically inhaled them, and that was that. Sure, a couple people came and told me how amazing they were, and that I was the best neighbor they could have asked for (I'm so modest, I know). But, all in all, it wasn't such a big deal.

Come Monday, I baked the last of the cookies, being sure to underbake them slightly, so that even when they cooled, the edges would be crisp, but the rest of the cookie would stay soft and chewy. I've perfected this strategy, okay? Trust me. I walked into the classroom at the Royal Academy, where I greeted my classmates and my teacher, Jeremy, enthusiastically: "Hi! I brought us cookies!" to which Jeremy responded, "Wow. Christine, tell me, is this how you make all of your friends?"

The answer, in all honesty, is definitely yes. And these babies, straight out of the oven, with molten craters of dark chocolate scattered throughout the soft, buttery oatmeal cookie, are particularly successful on that front.


Now what on earth could be wrong with that? Well, I'll tell you. The picture directly above these words is entirely to blame. On Flickr, the photosharing website where I keep all of my photos, I sometimes gets messages from random people wanting to use my photos in their blogs or online articles and things like that. It's quite flattering to get these requests, and it makes me feel good about myself as a beginner photographer.

So, the other day, I was checking my email, and I saw I'd recieved a message from someone named Karen, who wanted to use one of my photos in an article she'd written. I happily clicked on the link to the article, and was in for a slight shock at the title:

"Cooking at Home Can Make You Fat"

Ok, so the article is not very well written, but it has a good message. Portion sizes have grown much, much larger over the past few decades, which might have more to do with the growing obesity problem than people are giving it credit for. Maybe McDonalds isn't entirely to blame after all?

At the same time, the fact that I had made these cookies--that I was the one "cooking at home"--was slightly disturbing to me. It almost felt like I, as the cook of the deliciously unhealthy cookies, was to blame for obesity in the world.

I guess I'll leave the decision up to you. Blame me for your materialistic insecurities (since none of you are obese, of course, it's slightly less dramatic), or thank me for making you lots of new friends? The choice is yours, and the recipe appears below.

Two-faced Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 ¼ cups flour

2 cups old fashioned (not quick cooking) oatmeal

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

½ cup granulated sugar

1 cup light or dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1-2 cups finely chopped, good quality dark chocolate

1. If you're baking immediately after making the dough, preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Move oven racks to upper and lower middle positions. If not, do this about 20 min before you start baking.

2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl, and set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, mix butter and sugars with a whisk or electric mixer until well combined, then beat in egg, egg yolk, and vanilla until smooth (I made a double batch, hence the four egg yolks in the following picture).

4. Stir in the dry ingredients.

5. Stir in the oatmeal with a large wooden spoon or stiff spatula (preferably a sparkly pink one).

6. Stir in the chocolate. (those steps definitely could have been written as one step, but I had lots of pictures, so I separated them. Sorrrrrry)

5. Ideally, refrigerate for 12-36 hours. If you don't have time, don't sweat it.

6. Form 1/4 cup balls of dough, and place on a baking sheet (on parchment paper or a silpat, if you have them). Bake until edges are very lightly browned, and center is not yet set, about 13-16 minutes. Smaller cookies will take much less time to bake! Be careful!

I'll leave you with two images that pretty much sum up why these cookies are so great, or so terrible, if you hate joy, and puppies, and other beautiful things. The first, is good butter, and lots of it.
The second is good chocolate, and lots of it.

Happy Holidays!

Between dinner parties, singing, and composing fugues, I haven't had much time to write anything here. However, I don't want to give the impression that I've totally given up on my blogging duties! So to help you with your New Year's resolutions, consider this educational video from the 1980s, promoting the many benefits of whole grain bread: