Olive Biscuit re-do

So over Christmas I found and tried a recipe for something called "Scourtins." Essentially "Olive Biscuits" except when you say things in French they sound much cooler and more appetizing.

The recipe was super easy and I made it between cookie batches, enjoying the savoury olfactory break from the unrelenting sweet onslaught. Seriously when you make as many cookies as I do at Christmas, you get an ADHD-quality sugar high by the end of the day. These biscuits do legitimately smell amazing. I mean, olives smell amazing. And salty olives smell amazing. And salty olives plus butter? Yeah, you get the idea.

I started making it and immediately realised that, like most recipe quantities, whenever they say "makes 34" they mean "makes 34 if you've been to Cordon Bleu, but otherwise makes 5." So I doubled it halfway through and sort of fumbled my way through the flour/olive oil addition process. The result was that they looked and tasted gorgeous, but only if you could get past the fact that they were essentially olive flavoured sand. The texture was, how best to put this, beyond off. Crumbly to the point of you just had to look at them and they would disintegrate before your eyes.

Mum, bless her, kept them in a nice little tupperware container in the cupboard, trying to make me feel better. But as the container was glass, all that did was serve as proof that the number of biscuits remained unchanged as the days went by. It was rather discouraging.

BUT never one to be deterred, and really wanting to eat olive biscuits, I decided to try, try, try again. If there's one legitimate justification for persistence in the face of adversity, it's the prospect of eating Scourtins at the other end.

"Black" Olives. What can I say.
I'm a philistine.

The recipe calls for Nyon olives. (full disclosure, I am not an olive connoisseur. I know there are a million kinds and that they are all totally different but it goes over my head. Hey, nobody's perfect. I'm learning.) The first time I made them, we happened to be somewhere that sold Nyon olives. They were marinated in herbs and were black and tiny and holy CRAP they were delicious. I put what was left over from the recipe in a bowl and put the bowl in the library before dinner. Five minutes later Mum came into the kitchen carrying the bowl and said "Take these away from me right now. Hide them in the fridge and never tell me where they are." When I got olives over the weekend (see Gauntlet Pasta, below) they didn't have Nyons but I decided to play fast and loose with my olive selection and got what I will say are "black olives." Not Kalamata. I know that much. But beyond that, sorry if I'm offending anyone. Black olives.

If you can't deal with me anymore then stop reading. Otherwise, recipe, ho!


SCOURTINS (Olive Biscuits)

Doubled and adapted from the one at Epicurious.com.

INGREDIENTS

2 sticks plus 2 tbs unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup cured olives, preferably from Nyons (this is true but I used black olives), pitted and coarsely chopped

 Sea salt

 

Cream butter and confectioner's sugar in a mixer. Add the olive oil. Add the flour in two bits, blending after each one. Add the olives and either stir by hand or use the mixer. I did both, incidentally. The dough will be very sticky.

 

This is where the instructions get weird, so for you, dear reader, I have moved them around a bit to accommodate normal human behavior, standard kitchen equipment, and the progression of time as a linear notion.

 

 

Cute little dough heads peeking out of wax paper rolls.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a pastry mat, work the dough for a few minutes, making sure the olives are well incorporated. Form the dough into a log about an inch in diameter, wrap in wax paper, and refrigerate at least 1/2 an hour.

 

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice chilled dough into 1/4 thick rounds and place on parchment lined baking sheets. You can squeeze them pretty close together they don't spread. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for about 15 minutes until the edges are golden. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks.

BEETLE NOTES

 

You will be able to see, if you look, the differences between my recipe at the one at epicurious. For starters. 1 1/2 cups of confectioner's sugar is a hell of a lot of sugar. That just seemed ridiculous. I thought about keeping that measurement as a single portion, but even 3/4 seemed excessive. So I added 1/4 cup and hoped for the best. Guys, don't get me wrong, I TOTALLY GET the sweet/salty thing. That is the greatest combination ever.(I used to put m&ms into my salted movie theatre popcorn. Hello?)  But 1 1/2 cups just seemed like it would push it over the salty/sweet deliciousness threshold into the realm of "this is actually a cookie with olives in it which is a fundamentally flawed concept." So 1/4, I'm hoping, gives it that touch of sweetness without overpowering the olives, which is kind of the point. I also added two more tablespoons of butter because when I stopped at 2 sticks the dough wasn't coming together. More butter people, more butter!



Butterrrrrrrrrrr

The rolling directions are insane. I seriously read them ten times trying to figure out which step came first. From what I gather, the person writing this recipe assumes that everyone who makes these has an industrial sized refrigerator that has enough room to store, for a significant period of time, a entire pastry mat, flattened out.

 

To which I raise a manicured eyebrow and say OH REALLY?!?!?!

 

Because. What the hell?

 

First. Almost nobody has a fridge that size. (If only we were all that lucky.) Second. Even if I DID have a fridge that size, it would be full of, I don't know, FOOD? Maybe? Space in a refrigerator is always at a premium. That's why there are bazillions of advice columns for fridge organisation and storage. It's a BIG problem for 99% of the population. Organising your fridge is like playing Tetris. Except that it's a game of Tetris you can only play for three minutes at a time because you can't leave the door open because everything will go bad. You rip open the door, frantically try to slot things in, look for those pieces that have the sticky out bits, identify the big bulky ones, slam the door shut again, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Until you either give up and eat whatever you can't fit in, or all your food spoils, and game over you're dead.

 

The concept that I would be able to roll out a pastry mat sized piece of dough and then just POP it in my fridge without first removing everything, including half the shelving, is preposterous. And vaguely condescending.

 

THEREFORE I decided to indicate (above) to work the dough a little with your hands, then roll it into a log in wax paper, THEN put it in your fridge. Where it becomes that AMAZING Tetris piece that's one column that fits everywhere and always gets you a complete line. So much easier.

The dough log Tetris equivalent of the magic long piece.

 

Pre-cooking

If the dough is in a log, also, you don't have to cut it out into rounds. Which isn't inherently difficult it's just time consuming, and assumes that you have the required counter space. Which, if you live in New York, you obviously don't, and if you have a standard sized kitchen you probably don't either. Cutting off the 1/4 slices is just . . . so . . . easy. And once the dough is chilled it cuts like a dream.
 

 

Basically I'm just facilitating your access to salty olive goodness. I know I know. I love you too.

 

 

Don't be afraid to leave the Scourtins in for more than 15 minutes either. This time, even though my slices were (for the most part) 1/4 inch thick, at 15 minutes they weren't golden brown, or brown at all. I ended up leaving them in for almost 10 minutes more. Your oven may be different. Just saying, don't automatically pull them out at 15, they could totally need to go a bit longer.

 

Also, don't worry that the French police will come find you because you didn't use the right olives. I guarantee you that these will be fine even though I'm sure I used what I'm sure are VASTLY inferior olives.

 

As a matter of fact, perhaps that knocking at the front door is the gendarmerie right now.

 

Alors! Qu'est ce-que tu fait? C'est un cauchemar!

 

To which I reply, through a mouthful of biscuit,

 

Tant pis.

Gauntlet Pasta

I mentioned a few posts back about being taunted by Martha Rose Schulman and her bright green warm weather pastas. Well. Guess what, Martha?

CONSIDER THE WARM WEATHER PASTA GAUNTLET THROWN.

Ok to be fair, it wasn't exactly warm yesterday. To be totally fair, I was cold when I woke up, cold during my workout (you know when you're freezing AND sweating at the same time? Yeah. Sucks.), cold during my hot shower, cold as we poked around a used book store, and cold as we bought soap we didn't need and shoes we did.

I was even cold as I drove. Now, I have italicised drove like that not because it is so unusual to be cold when you're driving, but because the act of driving in and of itself, when you are a Warrior Beetle like me, is highly significant and worthy of italics. I got my license when I was 19. Late, yes, but so was everyone who went to boarding school. I drove for one summer, then went to college, then moved to New York. Before getting behind the wheel last week, it had been a whopping eleven years since I'd steered anything more complicated than a GoKart, and if I'm honest, that final time had not been without incident. I had just gotten back from my year abroad in England, and after pulling out onto a small highway began serenely driving down the left side of the road. Needless to say, it was a short trip.

And once you're in New York, duh, what's the point. The trade off there is that I got to used to being in the backseat of a taxi cab that I became a horrible front seat passenger. Everything seemed WAY too close and I spent a lot of time scrabbling at the door and hissing in panic as we, in my mind, careered straight for a guard rail or car in front of us. I see now that this was kind of annoying. Actually, it was totally obnoxious (an after-the-fact apology can be found here). And so Mum was technically justified in her voluble pronouncements that she had been driving for almost 50 years and if I was going to be such a freak I could stay at home with a pillow over my head (I believe the phrase "worse than Gramma" was used more than once).

ANYWAY. Point being. I drove. To New Hampshire. (We live 5 miles from the border . . . totally not as epic as it sounds.) And I was cold the entire day. At one point I turned Mum and said "Am I dying or is it actually this freaking cold right now?" and she, bless her heart, said "No I'm freezing too this sucks get back in the car let's go home I want to take another shower and use my new soap."

Where was I.

Ah yes. Green Pasta. Martha Rose Schulman. GAUNTLETS.

We hit the health food store on the way home and they had olives. Olives, dear reader, OLIVES. Always a good choice. And I was sulking because I wanted to be in Santa Barbara somewhere eating fava bean and garden pea pasta in the late afternoon sunshine and engaging in witty banter with my attractive dinner guests, gazing out over my expansive estate as warm night fell and tea lights magically lit themselves around me.

So I bought olives. GREEN ONES. And decided to go for it.

GAUNTLET PASTA

or

EDAMAME, CAULIFLOWER, AND GREEN OLIVES WITH WHOLE WHEAT PASTA

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 pound whole wheat linguine
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 head of cauliflower, floretted (yes, it's a word. no, I don't care what you think.)
• 7 oz. green olives
• 15 oz. Edamame, shelled
• Olive Oil
• Fresh Rosemary
• Goat cheese (optional)

Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Add the linguine.

(TOP TIP: If you break the linguine strands in half they will all fit in a saucepan and you can cook it in a smaller pot. It's also easier to eat if the strands aren't as long.) Cook until al dente. (please for the love of all that is holy do not overcook your pasta, everyone does and it tastes like glue) Cook about 10 minutes, drain, return to pot and stir in enough olive oil to coat the strands and keep them from glomming together.

Heat oil in large frying pan, add onion and cook about 5 minutes. Add rosemary and cauliflower.

Stirring frequently, cook cauliflower about 10 minutes until tender and beginning to brown on the sides. Add more olive oil as needed if it begins to stick to the bottom.

Add edamame and stir, cook a few minutes more. Add olives, cook a few minutes more.





Timing wise, I started boiling the water when I put the onion in the frying pan. That seemed to work out pretty well. Both were done and piping hot at almost the same time.



Dish out the pasta, top with the Edamame/Cauliflower/Olive deliciousness, and sprinkle with goat cheese if that's your thing.

 

Sit by the phone and wait for Martha Rose Schulman to ring you up and say OH IT'S ON.

Experiment Cookies - Don't Try At Home (I'm Serious)

You know, looking back, I should have known that a day when your cat leaves you a "present" of a dead sparrow on your doorstep, your cookies will not turn out well. That must be written down in a New England almanac somewhere.

For quite some time now I've been wanting to make cookies with silken tofu. Not because I think that cookies with butter are bad (um, have you READ the last few posts?) but because it's a commonly used butter/egg substitute in vegan cooking. And if baking with tofu was such an unworkable idea, then the bazillion vegan bakeries that exist in the world (and the million that exist in Brooklyn alone) wouldn't be able to stay in business. So somebody has to be doing it properly. Right?

Well. Funny you should ask.

I decided today would be a Silken Tofu Cookie Day. Specifically, a Peanut Butter Silken Tofu Cookie Day. Now, I have my own AMAZING peanut butter cookie recipe that I tweaked from a Gourmet one back in 2001. It has never produced anything but epic deliciousness, and is relatively healthy in that it uses natural peanut butter and whole wheat flour. It's a classic, tried and true, never deviate, BIBLE of peanut butter cookieness. So . . . I deviated. I took that recipe and sort of smashed it up against a tofu recipe I found online. The results?

Well. Funny you should ask.

It is perhaps significant that today is the 60th birthday of the DNA double helix. Like Crick and Watson before me, I have ventured into uncharted territory of genetic manipulation and experimentation. I'd like to think that they would salute me as a fellow pioneer. Do I think they would have a cookie to celebrate?

Well. Funny you should ask.

SILKEN TOFU EXPERIMENT COOKIES
or
PEANUT BUTTER TOFU COOKIES THAT DIDN'T TURN OUT PERFECTLY
or
PROOF THAT YOU SHOULD USE BUTTER WHEN MAKING COOKIES
or
YEAH IT SMELLS NICE IN THE KITCHEN BUT THE FIRE ALARM JUST WENT OFF

You know what, for brevity's sake, let go with

WHOLE WHEAT PEANUT BUTTER TOFU COOKIES

Deceptively OK looking . . .

INGREDIENTS

• 2 packages silken tofu 
• 16 oz. (standard size jar) all natural chunky peanut butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

In mixing bowl, beat silken tofu, peanut butter, and brown sugar on high until pale and fluffy. Add baking powder and salt. Add flour a bit at a time, beating after each addition.

Drop by heaped tablespoons onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake at 400 degrees about 20 minutes until browned on top.

BEETLE NOTES

YOU GUYS I HAVE SO MANY NOTES.

First off, the jury is still out (OUT? The jury is in FIJI) on these. Mum is truly going to earn her guinea pig stripes when she gets home. There is a 90% chance that this recipe is going to be scrapped.



Tofu and Peanut Butter and Sugar. Looks fine so far.

Starting out, there was no problem. The tofu and peanut butter came together really nicely, it smelled delicious and I was very optimistic that they would turn out, if not "classic" then at least "nice." The original recipe called for 1 3/4 cups flour, and I stopped there because that's what I've been doing for the last 12 years. But as I measured out the dough on the baking sheets, I realised that it was too wet. Even for cookie dough. So I scraped a few dollops back into the mixing bowl and added more flour, a 1/4 cup at a time. I did that three times until I got nervous and decided that the dough would just have to be wetter than normal.

Post the extra 3/4 cup flour.

Still, so far so good. The dough smelled properly peanut buttery, and yeah it was damp, but it was the right colour. I had no reason to fear. Yet.

Due to wetness, it was impossible to do the classic fork crosshatch on them.








Incidentally, this is what Wikipedia says about the crosshatch:

"The early peanut butter cookies were rolled thin and cut into shapes. They were also dropped and made into balls. They did not have fork marks. The first reference to the famous criss-cross marks created with fork tines was published in the Schenectady Gazette on July 1, 1932. The Peanut Butter Cookies recipe said "Shape into balls and after placing them on the cookie sheet, press each one down with a fork, first one way and then the other, so they look like squares on waffles." Pillsbury, one of the large flour producers, popularized the use of the fork in the 1930s. The Peanut Butter Balls recipe in the 1933 edition of Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes instructed the cook to press the cookies using fork tines. The 1932 or 1933 recipes do not explain why this advice is given, though: peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and without being pressed, it will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience; bakers can also use a cookie shovel."

 

 

So a) I need a cookie shovel, whatever that is and b) apparently there isn't some massive, secret, Illuminati-like reason behind the crosshatch. The whole inception of it was fairly benign and anticlimactic (Or at least anticlimactic in retrospect? You know that I mean - for something that's that ingrained in our baking culture, you'd expect that it would be a crazy complicated or cool historical reason. Like . . . I don't know . . . it was a secret Freemason code for "all clear" or part of the underground railroad or maybe even to indicate that the cookies weren't poisoned?!?!?)

 

THE POINT BEING. When have you ever considered making peanut butter cookies WITHOUT the crosshatch? Right? It's like wearing white below the waist before Memorial Day. You would never, in a million years, do it.

 

So I've decided that because these experiment cookies DID NOT have a crosshatch on them, they don't count as Peanut Butter cookies, or cookies at all. I can pretend they never happened, and it won't go on my permanent record. We good on this? Good. 

The cooking time immediately became an obvious problem. The tofu cookie recipe indicated 20-25 minutes at 325. After 25 minutes at 325 they were still totally undercooked. I ended up leaving them in, checking obsessively, about 40 minutes in total. (see increased cooking temp above) I left them in until they were firm to the touch and the tips were starting to brown. Maybe this was a good idea? Maybe it was bad. At this point it really had morphed into chemistry class. (Btw if chemistry class had included baking, I totally would have taken it. Instead, I fulfilled my "science requirement" with Astronomy and Oceanography. Raaah liberal arts.)

Finished "cookies" with brown tops. They look . . . I don't know.
They don't look like they'd kill a person. But they sure as hell don't look like peanut butter cookies.

So like I said. This recipe is NOT a keeper. Probably not even one of those that elicits a sympathetic, mandatory-because-I'm-your-mother "No, I sort of like them."

HOWEVER. TAKE HEART DEAR READER. Because proper old fashioned, chock full of butter and eggs CROSSHATCHED TO WITHIN AN INCH OF THEIR LIVES Peanut Butter Cookies are coming, and will be shared.

And in the end, I accomplished what I planned today. I baked with tofu.

I'll be eating tofu for dinner tonight.

With vegetables.

In a soup.

Not in a cookie.

And for the next two months, whenever I see a package of silken tofu, I'm going to turn around, head for the dairy section, and buy a stick of butter.

BEETLE LESSON OF THE DAY

USE THIS.

 



NOT THIS.

Soup That Made Sense Yesterday

When I envisioned this post yesterday, it was a very pretty yet very damp, frigid New England day outside. I took a long walk in the afternoon because I happen to like gray and rainy days, but wearing boots, mittens, two pairs of leggings, and my running parka underneath my winter parka. With the hood up. From a down cocoon, it was a gorgeous day for a walk, really.



THIS is what it looked like outside. Total Wuthering Heights, right?
Although not Wuthering Heights because I hate that book, and if I ever saw
Heathcliff I would punch him in his stupid face.
Total Jane Eyre. Yes. Better. Mmmm. Rochester.

Anyway, it was misty and raw all day long, and as I got ready to make dinner, the only thing I could think of that I wanted to eat was . . . SOUP. Obviously. What else are you supposed to eat on a day like that? Little did I know, that, thanks to the ridiculously changeable weather in New England, this post would be retroactively irrelevant.

I am writing a post about soup and its warming/comforting properties on a day when it's almost 70F outside, on a day when, walking this afternoon, I had to make sure I put sunscreen on. Yes, dear reader, sunscreen. I wore jeans and a light cardigan and I was actually hot. That hasn't happened since . . . well since I lived in New York and couldn't control my thermostat. I had almost forgotten what the sensation of being overheated felt like.

The house, delightfully, has retained the cold. So I am under a fleece blanket in sweatpants as I type this. And when I go outside I immediately have to rip my sweater off. To give you a visual, my bread dough is rising in the foyer. Sitting in its bowl covered by its cloth on the doormat. Because the foyer is the warmest place in the house right now. That's just . . . sad.

So please forgive the silliness of a post entitled "it's cold eat soup", and perhaps save it for . . . ahem . . a rainy day. In the meantime, grab your shades, remove your jackets, and enjoy a truly gorgeous day.

SOUP THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ON A DAY LIKE TODAY BUT MAYBE WILL SOON

or, more succinctly

RAINY DAY SOUP

Reading through Recipes For Health in the Times yesterday and drooling over Martha Rose Schulman's amazing photos, I developed a case of Orzo on the brain. This is why this soup has orzo in it. Her recipes were all spring pastas! warm weather dishes! bright green ingredients to welcome a new season! To which I said a resounding HA as I walked listening to the rustling of my hood against my ears.

But the concept of soup with orzo sounded yummy and I knew we had it in the pasta cupboard. I also knew we had a lot of onions and a lot of broccoli. So, spurred on by the idea of orzo plus green vegetables, I made a cold weather dish that was green and full of orzo and thick and hearty and delicious.

Talk about innovation. Innovative Warrior Beetle. That's me.

RAINY DAY SOUP 

• One small onion, finely chopped
• Two medium bunches broccoli, floret-ed (I just made that verb up. You know what I mean.I'm totally using it from now on so get used to it.)
• 1 can Great Northern Beans (the small white ones, you can use the paradoxically named Navy Beans too)
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup Orzo
• Fresh rosemary
• Olive Oil
• salt and pepper

One of the best smells in the world. Cooked onions.
Except when it gets in your hair and then you're showering
the next morning and you think what the hell and then
you remember what you made the night
before and realise you're not dying.
And also to rinse and repeat.

Heat olive oil in a small pot, add onions and cook, about 10 minutes, until soft. Add rosemary sprigs and cook a few minutes more until it's nice and browned.

Add vegetable broth, beans in their water (this makes it nice and thick), and broccoli. Simmer about 5 minutes until broccoli is just starting to soften. Add orzo and let simmer about 7 - 10 minutes longer, until broccoli is tender and the orzo is done.










It's a really quick, easy soup that does actually look quite spring like, green and bright, but which is thick and total comfort food. And don't worry if your broccoli gets squishy or the pasta isn't perfectly al dente. It's SOUP. Squishy and warm is kind of the point.

With everything added. Beans, orzo, broccoli, rosemary. Green and warm and yum.

Mum wasn't home from work yet so I turned off the burners, covered the pot, and let it sit and stay warm for about half an hour. What happened then was that a bit more water was absorbed by the pasta, so it was really a very very thick soup, but sprinkled with cheese and with a massive wedge of bread on the plate next to it, I didn't hear anyone complaining. I didn't hear anything at all, actually. We believe in chewing with our mouths closed.

The thicker, post absorption soup. Stew. Whatever it was at that point.

Now, excuse me as I pull the curtains in the library because the glaring yes glaring sunshine coming in through the windows is making it hard to see my computer screen. Sigh.

Sorry about the inappropriateness, dear reader, but hey, it's New England. Don't like the weather? Give it five minutes. It'll change.

Get Well Soon Bread

Our handyman is sick.

Actually, I shouldn't say handyman. Handyman doesn't even begin to describe him. I should say, rather, household maintenance guru, or household protector, or perhaps just household guardian. Yeah, I like the last one.

Our household guardian is sick.

The man of whom I speak is an older gentleman who, over the last few years, has transformed our house from a creaky, draughty farmhouse into . . . a slightly less creaky and draughty farmhouse (who am I kidding here). The point is though, that because of Ralph (his name, and he doesn't have a computer so he'll never read this haha) we have windows that open. Because of Ralph we have doors that close. Because of Ralph we have a side porch that, as of yesterday afternoon and some elbow grease from mum, is ready for breakfasts, teas, and suppers out of doors.

But Ralph is sick. Not dramatic Lifetime movie sick, you guys, don't worry. He just has a really bad cold. But he sounds like hell. I know this because he called this morning about getting some windows at Home Depot and Mum says he sounds like the crypt keeper's cranky grandfather who's been buried and then dug up again.

Mum also says that Ralph advised me, through her, not to use WD-40 on my squeaky spin bike wheel because it's not the right viscosity (?!?!) and that there was another kind he recommends but I've already forgotten what it's called.

Note: For those of you doing the math. In the almost two months since I've been home I've managed to wear through one entire set of spin bike pedal straps AND get a squeaky wheel. Yes. That's a lot of spinning. What can I say. It keeps me calm. 

An example of a head-bashing-in loaf of bread.

So. I decided that since Ralph has, literally, transformed our house (and from a purely selfish standpoint we need him alive and kicking), I would make him Get Well Bread. Ralph loves my bread, incidentally (toot toot, that's my horn right there).Whenever he comes to dinner I always make sure I give him an extra loaf of whatever I've made. He and I share the (correct) opinion that you cannot get ANY good bread anywhere anymore, and that it is all cotton candy-type whispy stuff that deflates like a bad soufflé when you poke it.We also, incidentally, share OCD household organisation habits, and a vague disdain for Mum's decision to paint the barn doors green.

I figured if Ralph was sick, then a good, solid, head-bashing-in loaf of bread would cure him.

But what kind to make?

Well. I've had this recipe kicking around on top of the printer for a few weeks now, and I've been wanting to try it. It's not a basic yeast bread, it's a bit earthier, a bit heartier. Hopefully, it's a bit . . . what's the word here . . . heal-ier? getbetter-ier? anticold-ier? You get the point.

MOLASSES WHEAT BREAD

I gotta say, I've been a bit off Martha since the Lemon Thyme Cornbread incident. (See here. I'm still planning on redoing it, but the thyme we got at the store last week was less than spectacular, and I'm holding out until I get the good stuff.) We've been in a sort of fight since then, and I may have said some things I'm not proud of about sugar and recipe measurements although they were completely deserved.

ANYWAY. I decided to put our differences aside, accept her apology, and move on. Big of me? Yes, I thought so too.

I wanted something that would warm you from the inside out. Something that would keep you satisfied and happy and yay-I-ate-awesome-bread-this-morning all day long. Basically I wanted something that would make you look like the kid they use for the Quaker Oats commercial. You know the one that eats a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and gets this revelatory smile on his face? Then aces his math test, climbs Mount Everest, and saves blue whales? That one. So, I made up with Martha, and took the Molasses Wheat Bread plunge.

The original recipe is here. I tweaked slightly to reflect what we had in the kitchen (or rather, what we didn't have in the kitchen). My version is below.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups whole-wheat flour

1 cup dark rye flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup canola oil                                      

3 cups lowfat plain yoghurt

3/4 cup blackstrap molasses

2/3 cup oat bran

 

In a large bowl, whisk together whole-wheat flour, rye flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add canola oil, yoghurt, and molasses, and mix well. Add oat bran and mix again.
 

Divide batter into between two  9 x 5 loaf pans (if not nonstick pans then grease with canola oil or cooking spray) Bake at 375 degrees about 45 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cool on wire racks before turning out.

 

BEETLE NOTES

 

The two loves came out normal sized, so . . . so far, Martha, we're good. And the recipe didn't call for any sugar at all, so we wouldn't fight about that. Yes, fine, molasses is sweet, but mixed in with all that wheat germ and rye flour, the sweetness will (at least I hope it will) be more of a background, dimension-giving taste than anything else.

 

I didn't use flax because due to it's extreme Beetle Un-Friendliness we never have it in the house. 

(Quick SAT analogy. Flax and Sunflower Seeds: My Stomach / North Korea: South Korea)

 

I normally shy away from using canola oil but in this case butter would have been completely wrong, as would olive oil, honey, or agave. And I'd used up the buttermilk so I used the lowfat yoghurt, which, due to its lack of full-fatness, Mum won't eat.

 

Yes, dear reader, my mother, my 5'7'', 110 lb mother, drinks only whole milk and eats only full-fat yoghurt. Also eats butter with everything. Also cheese. Hate Mail can be addressed to Mother of Warrior Beetle, 1 Beetle Lane, Beetle-Upon-Tyne, Beetleshire, WB1 5MB

 

Same pantry inventory reason behind the wheat germ/oat bran switch out too. We always have a lot of oat bran in the house because, full disclosure, I like to eat it directly out of the box with a spoon. Dry. I might be turning into a horse, actually. Slowly. Perhaps I am an evolutionary phenomenon.
 

You can't tell from this photo that my triceps
were ON FIRE as I was clicking the shutter.
But they were.

I did this without the mixer, and I probably didn't need any of the upper body yoga I did beforehand because oof that was a lot of stirring. I left it in the oven for about 50ish minutes, until it was nice and browned on top. And it smells, I have to say, pretty much like the olfactory equivalent of the Quaker Oat kid. Nourishing, warm, and sustaining. When the aforementioned Mother of Beetle gets home she will pass final judgement but at the moment, I think it turned out pretty well.



Good thing is, if it IS bad, we throw it out the kitchen window for the raccoons and rabbits, Ralph will never know because he will never read this, and my decision to make him Get Well Soon Chocolate Chip Cookies will never be questioned.

Saturday Comfort Supper - Panfried Potatoes and Kale with Smoked Salmon

OK. FIRST.

COOKIE UPDATE
Or rather
PUMPKIN SEED UPDATE

Shortly after posting last night, I greeted Mumsy in the driveway with a cookie. This is how the convo went:

A reminder of what happened
yesterday. These happened.

Me: Eat that.
Mum: Ooo cookies? What kind?
Me: Just eat it.
Mum: [looks down at it. suspicion appears] Pumpkin Seeds.
Me: Just eat it.
Mum: Hmm. Pumpkin Seed and what? Are they cooked? I have to take my coat off first.
Me: Just. Eat it.
Mum: [takes bite. pause.]
Me: Well?
Mum: [silence as chews and gazes contemplatively over the field.]
Me: Do you like pumpkin seeds now?
Mum: [takes another bite, more silence, more gazing.]
Me: MOM.
Mum: [looks down at cookie, chews, nods slowly.] I like pumpkin seeds.
Mum: We will be getting some more this weekend.
Mum: How many of these did you make?

SUCCESS, DEAR READER. RESOUNDING SUCCESS.

That being said.

I just found out that Live Free or Die Hard is on TV. This is the one with Bruce Willis AND Timothy Olyphant AND Maggie Q. So much pretty contained in one movie. Added bonus: Justin Long who is awesome and hilarious and adorable. It's actually not a bad one, as Die Hard's go, certainly a hell of a lot better than the newest one. Which was . . . dreadful. But shhhh don't tell Bruce I said that. Did I mention that he and I are secretly married? Well, we are. So I'm under marital obligation to go see all his films. And it would hurt his feelings if I said I didn't like it. So, for the record: Brucey you were wonderful. You always are.

The point of that is that I was just in the kitchen making what I think might be the 20th cup of tea (?) of the day and eating lentil cereal out of the box, and getting ready to go right back to the warm cavern that is the library, where my book, my computer, and a million Rebel Wilson videos ready to be downloaded from a youtube black hole of awesomeness eagerly awaited my return.

Incidentally, publishing peeps. I just started, years too late, I know, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud. So far so good. The writing is as exceptional as I knew it would be. The only difficulty I forsee is that this "Bootie" character is possibly the most irritating fictional creation of all time, and I've only had a couple of pages of him. If he plays the role I am expecting him to play then it may render the book unreadable. But so far the pages that are Bootie-free are quite good. I'll let you know.

As noted, I'm living in the guest room until my bedroom is finished, and therefore working my way through its somewhat eclectic bookshelves. Melissa Marr's dark (so dark) fairies rub bony and often bloody shoulders with P.G. Wodehouse, and galleys (pre-pub copies for those not in the lingo) of mysteries that pubbed in 2005 whisper clues to Hardy Boys first editions. My reading these days is all over the place, and more often that not a few years out of date. Claire Messud caught my eye the other day and since I was only reading three books the time, I figured I'd give it a go.

I look upon it as catching up on years and years of bestseller lists. So there.

Ok, sorry, tangent day apparently. The point of THAT is that the library is a warm cavern, my husband Bruce is on TV, I like my book a lot, I'm full of tea and buried under two fleece blankets, and the hill repeats I did yesterday have rendered my butt muscles . . . how shall I say this . . . sore as hell. What better time than the present to offer up

SATURDAY COMFORT SUPPER - Panfried Potatoes and Kale with Smoked Salmon

We all love hash, right? It's delicious. It's fried potatoes and onions and veggies (sometimes) and protein and it's warm and spicy and . . . hashy. It's great. It's also really good for dinner, did you know that?

Fish Hash is something that is underappreciated in the carnivore world. Not that good old fashioned corned beef hash isn't delicious in the extreme, but fish hash never occurs to most people as a culinary possibility, and that's so wrong. I mean, fish and potatoes is one of the most classic combos of all time, and when you add spices and onions and olive oil and a frying pan . . . come on you guys, how could that be bad?

Here's my simplified version for a sunny yet chilly Saturday night.

• 15 small red potatoes, quartered
• 1 bunch kale, chopped and large stems removed
• 1 small sweet onion (or half a large onion), diced
• 1 package (14 oz) smoked salmon (preferably Alaskan, the flavour is so much better), cut into small pieces
• Fresh dill
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Steam the quartered potatoes in a small pot about 15 minutes, until tender. They don't have to be done totally as they will cook in the pan, but they should yield very easily to a fork. Remove from heat.



That bright pink colour is what you want in smoked salmon.
The pastel salmon you get from Scotland or Norway,
ahem, pales in comparison.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and add the onion, stirring frequently and cooking until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes, kale, salmon, dill, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until the kale is done, about 5 minutes more. Feel free to add more dill (the more the better in my opinion) as you see fit.

We had a TON of fresh kale
so I steamed it all for future use.
Yay for backup kale!













There's no specific reason for this here.
I just really like photos of potatoes.

This version is significantly less spicier than most hashes. But I like it that way. It's hearty and warming without being overpowering. The kale gives the whole thing a bit of green, and adds and earthiness that the potatoes alone couldn't bring. And honestly dill is one of the best herbs out there. It's so clean and sharp and combined with fish and potatoes, it really is one of the best possible combinations out there.

So excuse me as I finish this post, go put on another sweater, and settle in for the evening.


Beetle Out.

TGIF! Have a cookie.

There's only one way to begin this post:

Sweet jesus on a cross burnt butter smells amazing.

Ok now that I've gotten that out of my system.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE! Have a cookie.

So my mission behind these cookies was to show Mum that she does actually like pumpkin seeds. She thinks she doesn't. When she gets home in another hour or so, she is going to, haha, pun very much intended, eat her words.

I debated which recipe to use to prove her incorrectness. There are Date and Pumpkin Seed cookies (yum AND vegan), Pumpkin Seed Cake (which looks very interesting and is also a cool green colour), and Pumpkin Seed Lace Cookies (beautiful and also vegan but the recipe was such a small amount I was worried about quadrupling it un-tasted). The runner up was Peanut Butter Pumpkin Seed via The Guardian which has been printed and added to the recipe folder. But in the end, the sparkly tiara and sash went to BROWN BUTTER PUMPKIN SEED COOKIES.

This is a symbolic interpretation. Pumpkin Seeds. Brown Butter. Voila.

To explain the reasoning behind the difficult final choice, I decided that if my mission was to prove that pumpkin seeds were delicious, then I should chose a cookie that was simple, one that highlighted the pumpkin seeds, one that let them speak for their little green selves. I mean, everyone likes peanut butter cookies, its a fact of life. You put pretty much anything in a peanut butter cookie, it's still going to taste like a really yummy peanut butter cookie. But a cookie in which Pumpkin Seeds themselves were the star ingredient? Ahh, dear reader, THAT would be the ultimate test.

I hereby insert a proactive apology to my Lovely Librarians (you guys like the name? I'm using it.) because you are probably not going to get any of these. I'm calling it right now, she's gonna eat them all. If the smell of heaven wafting from the kitchen all the way to the library (the current Beetle location) is any indication of how good these are going to taste, not even an emergency cookie delivery tomorrow morning is going to work. They'll be gone before then. Sorry too, to the aunt and uncle that are coming to visit tomorrow afternoon. Not happening. I'll make you something else.

I also made them to prove once and for damn all that Pumpkin in all its forms is absolutely not something that can only be eaten during the autumn and winter months. As soon as school starts in September every recipe site is chock full of slideshows featuring pumpkins and squash. Yes, fine, it's not seasonal year round, but that does NOT mean it can't, or shouldn't, be eaten.

Let me give you an example. What's a food we eat exclusively during autumn, specifically November? Stuffing. Now, I defy anyone on this earth to tell me that stuffing wouldn't be just as delicious, say, tonight, for dinner. See? PUMPKIN IS AWESOME YEAR ROUND YOU GUYS. Not only is it (unlike stuffing) crazy good for you, it is (very much like stuffing) freaking delicious.

Tiny yet so powerful.
Like Warrior Beetles.

Fun nutritional facts about Pumpkin and Pumpkin Seeds:

• Pumpkin has an almost embarrassingly large amount of Vitamin A
• Add to that fiber, beta-carotene, Vitamin C, Serotonin (happy!), Potassium (muscles!), Zinc (bones!) and a bazillion other important minerals that are all listed here.
• It has the free radicals that aid in . . . duh duh duh . . . WRINKLE PREVENTION
• subnote: I've been using anti-wrinkle cream since I turned 25, I'll be 30 in October. Do I look 16? Unfortunately yes. Do I still obsess over my skin care routine? Absolutely. BRING ON FOODS I LIKE THAT WILL KEEP ME FROM GETTING CROW'S FEET.
• The seeds themselves are crazy high in protein, reduce bad cholesterol, and reduce inflammation.
• Something I just learned but which just may come in handy: If you ever get a tapeworm, eat pumpkin seeds! Huh. Squirm-inducing but useful. And let's face it, if I god FORBID ever get a tapeworm, it's going to take everything in the universe to keep me from ripping out my insides myself. Including Pumpkin Seeds.

So, now that we've established that Pumpkin Seeds are healthy and that everyone should stop what they are doing IMMEDIATELY and go eat some, I present

WHOLE WHEAT BROWN BUTTER PUMPKIN SEED COOKIES

Adapted from In Jennie's Kitchen

2 sticks butter, browned in a saucepan and cooled
1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 cup pumpkin seeds, lightly toasted

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

Add the butter to a small pot over medium heat. Cook until the butter is melted, a deep golden color, and little browned bits begin to appear. Pour the butter into a heat-safe bowl and let it cool until barely warm, about 30 minutes.

Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cloves to a small bowl, and stir to combine.

See those little brown bits in the batter? Those are little
pieces of brown butter. Yep. I know.

Measure brown sugar into a mixing bowl and beat in the butter, then the eggs. Beat on high until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.





Add the flour mixture to the bowl. On low speed, mix until the flour is completely mixed in, about 1 minute. Stir in the pumpkin seeds.

The original recipe said to use a mixer, but I would do it by hand.
Otherwise, you risk breaking up the seeds,
and the visual impact is lost. Sob.

Drop heaping rounds of dough three inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 12 to 13 minutes, until the edges are golden and the bottoms are lightly browned. Remove sheet from the oven and let the cookies cool on the pan for 2 minutes. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

I mean, talk about visual impact.

BEETLE NOTES

I love that this recipe already used whole wheat flour, that might have swayed the final choice, actually. I doubled it because it said "makes 12 cookies" and that's a silly amount of cookies to make, in my opinion. I tripled the ground cloves because I always bump up the spices. I have never tried a recipe that used enough.

For future batches, I could switch out the brown sugar for agave, and if I wanted the cookie to be capable of curing the common cold, old age, AND cancer in one bite, use pumpkin instead of butter. But it felt like a "play it by the recipe" day, and, if I'm honest, I really just wanted the kitchen to smell like burnt butter. (See the second sentence of this post, above.)

12-13 minutes means at 12 minutes PRECISELY they will be done. If you leave them in for a nanomillisecond longer, they will go brown on the bottoms. Two nanomilliseconds and they will be more than brown on the bottoms. Not that that's a bad thing, but I would like it known that I took the proverbial cookie bullet for you guys here. Your cookies will be better because of me. You're welcome. My Lovely Librarians, I'd like to say that Mum will get the crispy ones and you will get the less-crispy, but . . . again, see above.

Blanket note that these are, sadly, not Beetle Friendly. Pumpkin, as I've noted, absolutely is. But Pumpkin Seeds, not so much. Them being . . . seeds . . . and all. So I shall have to live vicariously through everyone else who tries this recipe and swoons with deliciousness and newfound health and energy.

If you need me, I'll be spreading pumpkin puree on a piece of hardtak in the corner, weeping quietly.