bread pudding
12 Jul 2008 Leave a Comment
in bread, recipes, sweets, vegetarian Tags: baking, bread pudding, breakfast, home cooking, leftovers, make ahead, radical muffins love good food, winter
And since I’ve been an absentee blogger (a technical difficulty, my computer has gone lame and I am on bowered time-connected), I’m giving up a bonus recipe this edition. This is for the saucy wench in Chicago, for years of unflagging friendship. Though, you know, Sistergirl, you already have it; it’s in the ’zine.
Essentially, bread pudding is leftover bread buttered and baked in custard. One of those genius little recipes of frugality, a means to ensure remainders do not go to waste but are lovingly transformed into deliciousness.
The ingredients will vary based on what you have on hand, and the amounts will vary according to the size of your baking vessel. Please adjust accordingly and adopt to suit all your whims and fancies.
Basic Bread Pudding Instructions:
in a saucepan, heat about 2 1/2 cups of milk almost to a boil (scald it). Slice open a vanilla bean, drop it in and stir. Lower the flame and cook for about 15 minutes. Leave to cool.
butter both sides of thick slices of a leftover baguette, about half a loaf. Cut or rip into cubes. I think ripping is easier, because the buttered bread just sticks to your cutting board. Arrange the pieces in a casserole dish or baking pan. Whether you select a deep or shallow pan depends on your desired crispy to gooey ratio: deep pans make for more custardy, cakey pudding, and shallow pans allow for more crispy, golden top crust.
beat 3 eggs, or 5 egg yolks for lux pudding, with 1/3 cup of sugar and a dash of salt. Pour the scalded milk into the eggs in a thin stream, beating constantly. Pour over the bread. Let stand for at least half an hour, and it will be really happy if you wrap it up and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I set aside a bit of custard to drizzle over the top just before baking.
set your casserole in a pan that is larger around by about a quarter inch. Pour water in the bottom pan until the level is a quarter inch or so below the op edge of the casserole. This is a water bath. Bake at 350 for about an hour.
for breakfast, serve it with maple syrup, and maybe layer some raisins in. Pecans are good. For dessert, try it with dark chocolate bits and orange zest added, served with whipped cream or rum sauce. Or you can make it with pain au chocolate. No need to butter croissants, of course. Making jam sandwiches out of the bread, buttering the outside, and breaking that into cubes also makes a mad good pudding.
coney island corn bread
28 Mar 2008 Leave a Comment
in muffins, recipes, vegetarian Tags: baking, breakfast, cornmeal, kitchen equipment, maple syrup, old fashioned, sex toys, silicone, snack
the Radical Muffin kitchen has been gifted (by the capoeira woman in the joy of her grad school acceptance- brava) a baking tray with daisy and tulip shaped cups. Here’s the news: it is pink silicone. Ha! And just like you can boil your silicone sex toys for purity, you can throw this spring pink wonder in an oven.
Now, I am an old fashioned girl in terms of kitchen equipment, whipping cream by hand, but dang if these little muffins didn’t turn out of the pan with every petal in place simply by turning it over. No dramatic wrestling, whacking, and banging; no surgical butter knife maneauvers. No grease. Okay, maybe I had to poke the mooshy bottom of the cup a bit, but that’s an enjoyable mooshy poke.
I agree with other kitchen romantics that the artificially cheery trays lack something, and the manufacturing of them cannot be good for the planet. If you happen into any of these, however, don’t kick ‘em out of bed, er, the kitchen.
preheat your oven to 350ºF.
in a medium mixing bowl, cream 3 tablespoons of softened butter with 3 tablespoons of sugar. beat one egg in a glass measuring cup and stir into the sweet fat. in the same cup, measure out 1 ¼ cups of middle eastern yogurt and stir it into the batter.
in another small bowl, sift together one cup of cornmeal and ¾ cup of whole wheat flour with 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of baking soda and ½ of salt. Stir in a ¼ of whole bran. Grate fresh nutmeg into the dry ingredients, about ½ – 1 teaspoon, or 8-10 good strokes on a microplane or file.
stir your dry ingredients into the wet. The batter will be thick, thicker than your average pancake batter. If it is very doughy, add a little more yogurt or a tablespoon or two of water or a tablespoon of maple syrup.
spoon your batter into the muffin pan of your choice. This makes a dozen flower muffins or standard sized mushroom-shaped muffins.
bake for 20 minutes or until the center is firm to the touch. Let your tray sit for 10 minutes on the stove top then turn the muffins onto a cooling rack.
Tasty hot, warm, or at room temperature. Slice open and toast or fry on a skillet. Drizzle with maple syrup or jam of all sorts.
ps- thanks, mermaid girl, for the extra love and the sparkley bunny card.
green peppers & egg sandwiches
12 Feb 2008 2 Comments
in bell pepper, eggs, vegetarian Tags: breakfast, Chicago, cooking for one, eggs, italian cooking, Italy, olive oil, sandwich, skillet
This is one of my favorite sandwiches because I can get everything local and because it is something my family made for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I was growing up. My grandpa and great uncle grew up in a Sicilian family who immigrated via New Orleans to Chicago. Uncle Ronnie was a butcher, so these sandwiches followed dinners of Italian sausage and peppers and the leftovers went with the eggs. Now they follow sausage-free meals when I sauté an extra pepper or two or they emerge on their own, worth the work of slicing a pepper.
For two sandwiches or one generous sandwich (a good idea):
slice 1 green pepper into strips and sauté in olive oil on medium-high heat until soft and slightly charred about 15-20 minutes. Scoop the cooked peppers into a bowl
slice a hand’s length from a loaf of Italian bread (or baguette) and cut that in ½ lengthwise.
rub the cut sides into the oil in the skillet and fry till toasted. Weighing down the bread will flatten it and more deeply toast it. I often use my tea kettle or another cast iron skillet.
whisk an egg or two with a little cream and a little salt & pepper. Scramble in the skillet.
assemble eggs, peppers on the baguette and sandwich. Eat.
If you are upset by how the egg and pepper squidges out the sides, try hollowing out your bread a little.
