I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
Recently, there had been a lot of talk about Girl Scout cookies, and those sweet, little girls standing at tables with stacks of cookie boxes are pretty hard to turn down. Everyone has a favorite Girl Scout cookie. I’ve always liked the Do-Si-Dos and Samoas, but the hands-down most popular has to be the Thin Mint. I had heard so much exicitement about them lately, I thought it would be fun to make them from scratch. I looked through a few books and found some reasonable facsimiles, but the one that seemed closest to the original in appearance and texture was the thin mint cookies from Super Natural Cooking. The chocolate wafers are made with whole wheat pastry flour and powdered sugar, and they’re dipped into mint-flavored melted chocolate.
The cookie dough was mixed and then wrapped in plastic and left to chill in the freezer for 20 minutes to make it easier to handle. Still, it was a sticky dough, and in the book, Heidi suggests rolling it out between layers of plastic wrap. I could tell that rolling it on a floured surface would have caused a lot of extra flour to be incorporated, but with big sheets of plastic, rolling the dough was a breeze. It was rolled to a thickness somewhere between one quarter inch and an eighth inch. Too thin and the cookies would have been brittle; too thick and they wouldn’t have had a nice crunchiness. The cut cookies were baked and allowed to cool. Then, semi-sweet chocolate was melted and flavored with mint extract. A tip to keep in mind is to add a little extract at a time and taste as you go. I added the extract in one half teaspoon increments and ended up adding a total of two teaspoons. But, each brand is different so, unfortunately, tasting is a task you just have to do. With a face full of chocolate, I set about dipping the cookies and then letting them dry on parchment paper.
The good news about making your own thin mints is that you can choose the ingredients that go into them. In the cookies, I used Van Houten cocoa powder from France (a lovely gift that I continue to enjoy). And, for the chocolate coating, I used 58 percent cacao El Rey feves. You can also decide how minty you want them to be. It’s hard to say no to those little girl scouts selling their cookies, but the homemade version is pretty irresistible too.
For a combination of six ingredients, eight if you count water and salt, this soup has amazing flavor. I wanted a hearty, wintery, bean soup, and I was willing to expend the energy to soak the beans, chop vegetables, and stir for hours while it simmered. Then, I found this recipe, and almost none of that was required. Did you know you don’t even have to soak baby lima beans before cooking them? I didn’t. They’re big enough, even though they’re babies, that I would have assumed they should be soaked overnight like other dried beans. In less than an hour of simmering, they were cooked through and tender. As they cooked in plain water, a head of garlic bobbed along with them and added flavor. Sauteed onion and chipotles were added once the beans were cooked, and other than squeezing in some lime juice, that was all the effort that was needed. This soup is found in Super Natural Cooking, and it was part of a nice, light meal with a citrus and celery salad.
As I mentioned, the baby limas were not soaked. They were simply washed and then placed in a pot with water. The top was cut off a bulb of garlic and it was added to the water. This was left to simmer for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I finely chopped an onion and a few chipotles from a can, and those were sauteed in clarified butter. The beans really don’t demand any special attention while they cook, but you should check them for doneness just before 40 minutes have elapsed to be sure they don’t get to a point of mushiness. When they were just cooked through, the sauteed onion and chipotles, some adobo sauce from the can of chipotles, and salt were added. After a few more minutes of simmering, the soup was ready.
The soup was so easy to prepare that I actually went ahead and made the suggested garnish as well. Crunchy topopos were made from a multi-grain tortilla which was thinly sliced, the strips were tossed with some vegetable oil, and they were baked for a few minutes. They were a nice textural contrast on top of the spicy, brothy soup. The butter sauteed onions added richness while the chipotles’ smokiness and spice worked some kind of magic. This tasted far more complex than it actually was, and I might not have believed how simple the recipe was had I not prepared it myself.
Fresh, crisp, light, and brightly-flavored aren’t terms that are used to describe winter food very often. But, this is a winter salad, and it’s all of those things. Those cute boxes of clementines in all the grocery stores had been calling out to me for weeks, and I finally brought one home. I haven’t yet decided how to use the remaining 50 or so clementines other than for snacking, but seven of them were delicious in this salad. There are also kumquats, hence the name, celery slices, and crunchy walnuts. I found the recipe in Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson.
The clementines were peeled, and the segments were pulled apart. Celery stalks were thinly sliced on a diagonal. I really like celery leaves, and I tend to use the interior stalks with leaves intact for salads. So, the slices and chopped leaves joined the clementine segments in a large bowl. Then, ten kumquats were thinly sliced, seeds were scooted aside, and those slices joined the salad followed by toasted walnuts. A quick vinaigrette was made from lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. The vinaigrette was carefully mixed into the salad by hand so as to prevent the citrus pieces from breaking. Last, the plated salad was topped with parmesan shaved from a block of cheese.
There’s nothing wrong with typical, slow-roasted and braised winter dishes, in fact there’s one I’m planning to mention soon, but this salad was a nice bit of freshness in the midst of this season. It was sweet, tart, nutty, and fruity all at the same time. As I served it, I thought it might also be nice on a bed of baby arugula leaves to add a peppery note, or fennel slices might be a lovely addition to it. I don’t mean to overcomplicate it though because the simplicity of its mix of flavors was great just as it was.
Trying a lot of new and different recipes can have its ups and downs. There are ones that are easy and lovely and cause no stress and turn out delicious. Others are a little more complicated and leave you wondering about the results until the very end. And, once in a while, there’s a recipe that ends up being a complete waste of time and ingredients. It doesn’t happen often, but I just experienced one of the latter recently, and it’s depressing. I had to move on, find something really good to try, and forget about it. The sikil pak from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson was a great recipe for dip and for forgetting about bad food. This is a Mayan dish that’s perfect for dipping tortilla chips. Ground pepitas form the base of the dip and an habanero gives it spice. I have no idea how I’d never encountered this before, but now that I know how to make it, I’ll be doing so frequently.
An habanero and some unpeeled garlic cloves were charred in a pan and then allowed to cool. Tomatoes received the same treatment. The pepitas were ground in a food processor and removed to a bowl. Then, the seeded and chopped habanero, the peeled garlic, and the cored tomatoes were roughly chopped in the food processor. The ground pumpkin seeds were returned to the food processor, and the goal was to puree this mixture to a mayonnaise-like consistency. Some vegetable stock was called for in the recipe, but there was enough juice in the tomatoes I used to achieve the desired texture without adding any other liquid. Finely chopped white onion, cilantro leaves, and a couple pinches of cinnamon were stirred into the dip to finish it.
It was noticeably fiery but not in a painful way. The pepitas smoothed out the heat, and the tomatoes freshened it up. Charring the vegetables added deeper flavor and earthiness, and the onion and cilantro added texture and spunk. The dip gets even better as it sits in the refrigerator overnight, and I’m certain about that because I nearly devoured the entire remaining quantity for lunch today. This was such a happy discovery; I think everyone should try making it. Or, just stop by my house because from now on I’ll be making some every few days.
When I was a student at the University of Texas, I used to love the banana espresso shakes at Quackenbush’s Cafe which was located right across the street from the side of campus where I spent my time. You could get the standard banana and espresso blended into a rich, ice cream shake, or you could add peanut butter. I soon realized what an incredible thing it was to taste espresso and banana at the same time. Our local Cafe Pacha makes a similar beverage, but they keep it on the lighter side with just banana, ice, milk, and espresso and no ice cream. Since I already had a history with this flavor combination, I knew I was going to like these muffins as soon as I saw the recipe. This is from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, and it’s simple enough that I could bake these regularly and enjoy a continuous supply.
The obvious first ingredient here is overripe bananas. For some reason, we never have extra bananas in our house. They’re always eaten before reaching that overripe-I should bake something with these state. In fact, when I want to bake anything involving bananas, I have to plan ahead, remember to buy extra, and allow them ripen. So, I’m not even sure how it came to pass, but last week I was in the unusual situation of actually having extra, quickly ripening bananas. It was kind of exciting to get to make a banana recipe on the spur of the moment. Since I was in the spirit of using up those mushy bananas and baking something unplanned, I had to substitute a couple of other ingredients to avoid a trip to the grocery store. The recipe calls for white, whole-wheat flour which I didn’t have. I used half unbleached, white flour and half whole wheat flour. It also calls for a cup and a quarter of chopped walnuts. I only had about half a cup, so I added some almonds and pecans as well. Everything else, including the plain yogurt and espresso powder, I had on hand.
As I mixed everything together and scooped the batter into the muffin tin, the aroma of espresso mingling with banana hinted at how delicious these were going to be. Fresh out of the oven, I could barely wait to have a taste. And, one of these muffins with a steaming cup of cappuccino was perfection. Now that I’ve tried these once, I may be buying extra bananas every week in hopes of finding overripe ones that need to be used a few days later.
This past weekend, we had the opportunity to entertain some friends one more time before they leave Austin to embark on new adventures. My goal for this dinner party was to piece together a menu that hinted at local flavors and highlighted local ingredients. Also, I wanted to exploit our friends’ willingness to act as tasting guinea pigs once more. I kid, but they have been quite kind and patient about tasting my experiments over the years. Not every item on the menu was a first-time test. The dinner began with Feisty Jamaican Splash cocktails and Tuna Tostadas. Up next, I served a chilled crema de guacamole soup from Super Natural Cooking. SNC is the beautifully designed book by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. The book contains a wealth of information about many whole and natural ingredients and how to use them in various ways. It’s organized by concept such as Know Your Superfoods and Explore a Wide Range of Grains. This recipe is from the Cook by Color chapter. It’s described as a perfect make-ahead soup, and that made it ideal for our dinner party.
There are two main parts to the soup, and the first involves cooking chopped tomatillos, serrano chiles, white onion, and garlic in vegetable stock. Once the tomatillos became tender, the mixture was blended until smooth and passed through a strainer. When cool, lime juice was added, and this soup base was chilled for a couple of hours. The second part of the soup was avocado blended with cilantro, salt, and lime juice. The two parts were then blended together. Topopos were made by cutting thin strips of corn tortillas and frying them for a few minutes per side. As they drained on paper towels, they were seasoned with salt and lime juice. To serve, I spooned the soup into espresso cups. The garnishes included the topopos, a little swirl of crema or thinned sour cream, and a tiny dollop of fresh tomato salsa.
The soup was thick, smooth, and deliciously fresh tasting. The tomatillos and lime juice acted together to brighten the flavor. The serranos gave it just enough of a kick, and the garnishes brought together all the elements I so love in Mexican cuisine. I wondered if the nice green color would dull as the soup chilled, but it did not. It was as pretty when it was served as it was a few hours before when it was blended. It was a great way to start this meal, and I’m looking forward to trying many more things from this book.
Recently, there had been a lot of talk about Girl Scout cookies, and those sweet, little girls standing at tables with stacks of cookie boxes are pretty hard to turn down. Everyone has a favorite Girl Scout cookie. I’ve always liked the Do-Si-Dos and Samoas, but the hands-down most popular has to be the Thin Mint. I had heard so much exicitement about them lately, I thought it would be fun to make them from scratch. I looked through a few books and found some reasonable facsimiles, but the one that seemed closest to the original in appearance and texture was the thin mint cookies from Super Natural Cooking
. The chocolate wafers are made with whole wheat pastry flour and powdered sugar, and they’re dipped into mint-flavored melted chocolate.
The good news about making your own thin mints is that you can choose the ingredients that go into them. In the cookies, I used Van Houten cocoa powder from France (a lovely gift that I continue to enjoy). And, for the chocolate coating, I used 58 percent cacao El Rey feves. You can also decide how minty you want them to be. It’s hard to say no to those little girl scouts selling their cookies, but the homemade version is pretty irresistible too.
It was noticeably fiery but not in a painful way. The pepitas smoothed out the heat, and the tomatoes freshened it up. Charring the vegetables added deeper flavor and earthiness, and the onion and cilantro added texture and spunk. The dip gets even better as it sits in the refrigerator overnight, and I’m certain about that because I nearly devoured the entire remaining quantity for lunch today. This was such a happy discovery; I think everyone should try making it. Or, just stop by my house because from now on I’ll be making some every few days.
As I mixed everything together and scooped the batter into the muffin tin, the aroma of espresso mingling with banana hinted at how delicious these were going to be. Fresh out of the oven, I could barely wait to have a taste. And, one of these muffins with a steaming cup of cappuccino was perfection. Now that I’ve tried these once, I may be buying extra bananas every week in hopes of finding overripe ones that need to be used a few days later.
The soup was thick, smooth, and deliciously fresh tasting. The tomatillos and lime juice acted together to brighten the flavor. The serranos gave it just enough of a kick, and the garnishes brought together all the elements I so love in Mexican cuisine. I wondered if the nice green color would dull as the soup chilled, but it did not. It was as pretty when it was served as it was a few hours before when it was blended. It was a great way to start this meal, and I’m looking forward to trying many more things from this book.