Granola muffins

30 Aug 2009 2 Comments

by radicalmuffin in bread, muffins, recipes Tags: , , , , ,

adopted from nigella lawson’s domestic goddess for Brooklyn kitchens

2 cups granola

1 cup buttermilk

¼ cup neutral oil like veggie (olive oil will taste strongly in a sweet muffin like this)

2 eggs

1 cup of flour

¼ cup of sugar (white or brown to compliment your granola)

preheat your oven to 350° and line a twelve-cup muffin tray with papers or butter the little bins.  Measure your buttermilk into a big measuring cup and beat in the eggs and oil.  In a big mixing bowl, pour all the liquids over the granola.

to measure flour for baking, stir it with a fork in the bag to loosen, scoop into a measuring cup and level off the top by running the flat side of a butter knife over it.  (Unless you are making Cake – then triple sift your flour.)  Gently stir the flour and sugar into the granola slop, just enough to combine, over-stirring toughens your muffins.  Spoon the batter into the muffin tin and bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.  Serve with butter and jam or honey.  Phenomenal warm but will keep for a day.  Freeze if you want to keep them longer.

bread pudding

12 Jul 2008 Leave a Comment

by radicalmuffin in bread, recipes, sweets, vegetarian Tags: , , , , , , ,

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.

spicy chickpea penne

02 Mar 2008 Leave a Comment

by radicalmuffin in pasta, recipes, vegan Tags: , , , ,

Prelude recipe: herbed peppers

Drizzle olive oil over a hot iron skillet, and sauté yellow and red pepper strips until soft and slightly charred (about 20 minutes). Halfway through the cooking time, generously sprinkle with dried Herbes de Provence and sea salt. Store in a glass jar covered in olive oil and store until use. Keeps for weeks in the fridge, but happier on the counter out of sunlight and used in a week.
Booty Spicy Chickpea Penne

This is a great weeknight one-bowl dinner if you have pre-cooked pasta stashed in your fridge like I happened to have along with some chickpeas I had soaked and cooked. An easy lunch while I was cleaning my space today. I am usually a big slut, but in this decade of 30s, I am finding keeping my space clean helps me get more done.

If you do not have cooked pasta on hand, boil a pot of water at the outset and cook some noodles. Penne is good with the chunky sauce, and any similar short, hearty textured noodle will be harmonious.

Slice a handful of cherry tomatoes in half across their fat middles. Chop a few yellow squash spears.

Heat a big iron skillet over medium heat and toast a generous sprinkle of hot and sweet paprika and turmeric, stirring with a wooden spoon & careful not to burn. Add olive oil and turn up the heat, a medium high flame – almost a high flame, be bold about it; it is tasty when the pasta fries. Add the tomatoes and about a teaspoon of sea salt. Cook until sizzling, stir and let it sizzle again and keep at it while you drain a large can of chickpeas and rinse them thoroughly (or maybe you have soaked and cooked chickpeas for yourself this week, good for you, muffin.). Add your chickpeas and pasta. Cook—I like to let it sit unstirred for five minutes or more, searing, gathering a little crust.

Chop the oil, herbed pepper strips: either stick a knife in the jar, or cut them in the pan (it is a messy pain to pull them out and slice on a board- unnecessary!). Stir a generous amount of peppers and their oil into the pasta. Cook for five minutes or so with the squash spread on top of everything; sprinkle with more Herbes de Provence.

This dish is happy to sit in the pan with the heat on low or even off for a long time (since the pan hold the heat) while you finish a task or when family folk are trailing in and our of the kitchen, looking for food on their own schedule.

peanut butter kiss cookies

13 Apr 2007 Leave a Comment

by radicalmuffin in chocolate, recipes, sweets Tags: , , , ,

icy tree in switzerland (photo i did not take) icy bridge

it snowed two inches in chicago yesterday

— peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies —

this is the kind of dough that doesn’t suffer from just dumping everything into a big bowl and running the electric hand mixer through it, but i tend to mix stuff by hand just because i like the head-time and the bowl and the hard stirring feels good in my arms. And this recipe originally (?) ran in an save-energy-to-help-the-earth calendar of recipes that encouraged hand mixing, among other energy saving tips. So to mix by hand:

using a heavy fork, cut the sugar into the shortening and peanut butter. Crack the eggs into a liquid measure or small bowl & beat, pour into the sugar & fat. Stir in the vanilla and milk. Continue stirring and sift in the dry ingredients. Stick the bowl of dough into the fridge for an hour or so.

preheat the oven to 375º and pour some sugar into a dish. Form the dough into balls, roll in the sugar, and line up on an ungreased cookie tray (i line it with parchment paper when i have it. Also, if you are using chocolate stars, it’s good to flatten your cookies a little by pressing them with the bottom of a glass or do the traditional peanut butter cookie cross-hatches by pressing the flat back of a fork onto the ball, once then again on a 90º angle). Bake for 10-12 minutes then remove the tray to the stovetop, press a chocolate piece into the top of each cookie while still warm and let sit on the tray while the second batch bakes then lift each cookie to a cooling rack.

makes about 4 dozen cookies, and the dough freezes pretty well so you don’t have to make them all at once.

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