Warrior Beetle: Birthday Part The Second (Part The First)

Oh my goodness so much cooking happened this weekend. So. Much. Cooking. All of it amazing and fun and delightful, and only minor burns were incurred, so overall I think we can call it a massive success.

So much cooking happened in fact that I shall break it down into two parts, because otherwise it will be the longest post in recorded history (and for me that's saying something) and also I don't want to make your brains come out your nose like they did in that one super creepy episode of Fringe. Also I need to take some more photos in good light, and I can't go in the kitchen right now because Mum is on a ladder with a paint roller listening to Philippa Gregory audiobooks and Priming the ceiling. Probably not the best time.

BIRTHDAY PART THE SECOND

DINNER

Onion, Rosemary, and Goat Cheese Tart

Sausage, Kale, and Wax Bean Stew served in Individual Pumpkins

Beetle's Finnish Oatmeal Bread (name tbd until I figure out what to call it)

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Upside-Down Apple Ginger Biscuit Cake

BREAKFAST

Norwegian Cinnamon Buns

From the pictures above, I bet you all can guess (being super intelligent dear readers that you are) what my Beetle Focus will be this afternoon. And so to business.

ONION, ROSEMARY AND GOAT CHEESE TART

This is one of those Triple Threat recipes that performs three crucial culinary functions simultaneously: 1. It tastes delicious. 2. It's gorgeous and makes you look like you are insanely talented. 3. It's actually stupidly easy and gloriously cheat-tastic.

This was GOING to be a recipe I found on epicurious.com for an Alsace Onion Tart. Basically an onion and cheese quiche. I had my million eggs, my heavy cream, I was set.

Then there was a last minute change due to spontaneous lack of pie crust and hey presto in a poof of magical kitchen fairy Beetlesparkledust it became puff-pastry instead of pie-crust and lost its deep-dish-egg-and-cream-filling-quicheness. Amazing how that happens, huh?

The Beetle end result, in retrospect, was probably less filling and therefore a better first course to serve when the second course is an entire personal roasted pumpkin stuffed with stew. And anyway caramelized onions are so insanely good that adding a quiche base to it really gives new meaning to the term "gilding the lily."

I mean, let's face it: when you fry onions until they are golden and crispy-sweet, cover them in salt, pepper, rosemary, and goat cheese, and then pour them into a little origami-style sheet of crispy-light-flaky puff pastry, the LAST question you're going to get from your dinner guests is: "Where's the cream filling?"

I will of course be making the aforementioned Alsace Onion Tart at some point, and I'm sure it's going to be magnificent (probably a very good option for when it gets properly cold), but for the record this is a perfectly acceptable, fast-as-hell-on-wheels (we're talking 20 minutes here), oh-crap-what-am-I-going-to-do-how-about-this-sure-why-not alternative. Sometimes, dear reader, the emergency backup plan turns out to be a damn good idea.

SAUSAGE, KALE, AND WAX BEAN STEW SERVED IN INDIVIDUAL PUMPKIN BOWLS

Ok don't freak out. I know this sounds scary. But it's seriously not. And it's seriously so. freaking. good. It's like a bread bowl that's died and gone to heaven.

The Pumpkin Bowl thing was a first for us last Thanksgiving. I saw it and said I'M SO MAKING THAT. Mum did her "wtf that's insane" face and started talking about how complicated it was going to be and how she didn't want me to spend the entire day in the kitchen cooking and screaming as I cut various fingers off. I told her to chill. And just wait.

Have you ever walked by a diorama of prehistoric cavemen sitting around a fire eating a carcass? That's kind of how Thanksgiving went. Both of us literally ripping chunks of roasted pumpkin off with our bare hands and stuffing it in our mouths as fast as possible. It was bliss. Pure, unadulterated, taste bud bliss.

And guess what . . . IT'S TOTALLY ROASTED PUMPKIN SOUP BOWL SEASON AGAIN.

It's really satisfying to scrape out pumpkins, did you know that? It really is. If you are one of THOSE people, feel free to preserve every single seed as if it were a life force unto itself, lovingly roast it, and serve it atop your quinoa-flax-buckwheat porridge in the morning as you sit next to your solar powered lamp in a fog of organic smugness. If you are me, on the other hand, dump it on some newspaper and shove it in the trash. Go ahead. The universe will forgive you.

Kale. The hipster vegetable of choice.

If you can make a jackolantern, you can do this. It's basically the same thing. The recipe is ostensibly from Gourmet and epicurious.com, but once you get the pumpkin cooking time down, I would consider yourself at liberty to stuff whatever the hell you want into that thing. Last year was tofu, beans, spinach, potatoes, onions, and fennel. This time, as evidenced by the heading, was veggie sausage, kale, wax beans, and onions.

Also wax beans are my new favourite food.

The initial roasting gets the pumpkin nice and squidgy. Pouring the filling in and roasting it a bit longer lets the sides absorb all the flavour and taste and become even more spectacular. As you work your way down to the bottom, you start to scrape off bits of pumpkin with your spoon, until the end when you're basically eating a hot, savoury, seasoned, pumpkin-veggie-stew-puree.

I mean.

When I made the big one last year, we finished the stew before we finished the pumpkin. If that happens (big IF here) you can slice it like a pie and heat it up in the oven. Or, if you are myself or my mother, you can rip it to shreds and devour it like you haven't eaten in months. Both are perfectly acceptable.

It comes down to this. Cooked pumpkin is one of the most comforting things you can eat. It's warm, sweet-yet-savoury, squishy, and flavourful. And it's so crazy good for you that you can FEEL yourself getting healthier with every bite. Using said pumpkin as a bowl for an equally good-for-you vegetable stew is a genius idea on the level of . . . I don't know . . . the spinning jenny? the internal combustion engine? the assembly line? sliced bread?

It's up there.

DON'T let yourself be intimidated by this. Seriously give it a try while we're in pumpkin season. Because in another month or so it'll be back to plain ol' china bowls. Plain, cold, inedible china bowls.

SOB.

BEETLE'S FINNISH OATMEAL BREAD (or something I haven't decided yet)

Ok. I absolutely am justified in patting myself on the back for this bread. I mean, BEYOND patting myself on the back. Driving my own victory lap. Standing for my own ovation. Hiring an entire brass band to toot my own horn.

Basically. This.

Finnish Oatmeal Bread is one of those Scraptastical Beetle inventions that comes when I'm standing in the kitchen, wearing three sweaters, drinking my millionth cup of tea of the day, flipping through Beatrice Ojakangas' cookbook, and realising that I used up my rye flour, my molasses, AND my butter, and that I need to make bread RIGHT NOW.

It's a mash up of my basic homemade bread recipe, three of Beatrice's recipes, and a few little "ideas" that I had along the way. And you know what? IT FLIPPING WORKED. IT FLIPPING WORKED WONDERS.

INGREDIENTS

2 tbs yeast
2 cups warm water
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups steel cut oats
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs caraway seed
1 tbs anise seed
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup honey

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and set it aside so it can foam. In a mixmaster fitted with the absolutely wonderful dough hook, combine the whole wheat flour, oats, salt, caraway, and anise. Stir the milk and honey together, and add to the flours. Pour in the yeast/water and let it mix for a while. Add the 2 extra cups of white flour a little bit at a time until the dough turns the corner from sticky into springy.

Turn the dough out into an oiled bowl (you can use vegetable or olive oil, or butter if you have it), cover it with a cloth, and let it rise for an hour.

After an hour, punch it down and shape it into two loaves. Place them side by side on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover again and let them rise for 30 - 45 minutes.

Slash an X in them, or lines, or a self-portrait, or what have you. I chose X's this time, but below is a loaf I made last week, and I also find the lines appealing.

This one just felt like an X, you know?

Bake at 425 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes. Let them cool on the sheet for about 15 minutes, then flip over on a rack and let the bottoms cool too.

This X exploded. I actually kind of love it that way.

So there you have it. Mum came home and ate a quarter of a loaf standing up in the kitchen in her coat, then another 1/4 of a loaf for dinner. This. Bread. Is. The. Sh*t.

The oats give it a crunchy texture and a slightly nutty taste, the honey gives it just a tiny bit of sweet without going overboard (and we do NOT do sweet, let me tell you). The milk gives it a richness that plain water and flour breads don't have, and the anise and caraway give it a depth of flavour and a taste that very clearly says "this is not crappy generic bread."

Mum says it's the best I've ever made, and that the imminent arrival of guests was the only thing keeping her from polishing it all off. She also asked me every half hour on the hour "you wrote the recipe down, right? you made sure you wrote it down? you need to be able to make it again, you know. I just want to make sure you know how to make it again. you wrote it down, right? you won't forget how to make it?"

Don't worry, Mummy. Beetle does not forget. And now, dear reader, neither will you.