Ten Grain Orange Muffins

One of my favorite items to make for breakfast is Orange Muffins. I use Nigella Lawson's recipe from Nigella Bites: From Family Meals to Elegant Dinners -- Easy, Delectable Recipes For Any Occasion.
It's a simple recipe and I've made them so many times the pages are warped and have various ingredients stuck to the pages, which is a sign of a good recipe . I recently bought a bag of Bobs 10 Grain Hot Cereal and had been wanting to make muffins with it. Inspiration struck at a sleepless early morning hour, when I decided to put the two together.

Ten Grain Orange Muffins

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup of self rising flour

1 cup of Bob's 10 Grain Cereal

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup of sugar

zest of one orange

1/3 cup plus 1tablespoon fresh orange juice

1/3 cup plus one tablespoon milk

1 egg 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

Melt the butter and set aside. Combine the flour, cereal, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and orange zest in a large bowl. 

This is the carcass of the orange, everything was used.

Measure the orange juice and milk into another bowl and whisk in the egg, and then the cooled, melted butter. 

Now pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, mixing with a fork (this is a distinct direction from Nigella) mixing until just combined. 

Spoon the mixture into muffin cups and cook for 20 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack, but not too long so that they are still warm when you eat them. 

I love these muffins. They are easy to put together and are such a nice little treat to have in the morning. They are not overly sweet, and the grain cereal gave them a hearty texture. For some reason my batter was more liquidity than normal but they tasted fine and were all eaten that day.

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Salad Week # 3 - Egg Salad with Kale and Spring Onion

Egg Salad Sandwich

This is just a fast little post to continue with the salad week theme. Perhaps it was all the talk about the royal wedding, but I have been craving egg salad. I find egg salad comforting and it really is easy to make, the most laborious task is hard boiling the eggs. I thought kale would work well replacing the often used celery. I've also been using the spring onions in just about everything I can think of. A spring onion, looks a little bit like a scallion but is sweeter than a regular onion, and are great in just about anything.

I know I have two onions pictured here but I actually just used one

This was a great mix of flavors, it was crunchy, and kind of tasted like spring. I don't know if food can taste like a season but this tasted like spring to me. Mixing six hard boiled eggs, a large handful of destemmed, washed, and thinly chopped Blue Kale, and one spring onion. Then add mayonnaise, salt and pepper at your own discretion. Spread on some wonderful bread and enjoy

The bowl of egg salad mixed.

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Salad Week - # 2 A Salad To Make Right Now

When Borders was closing it's doors, which is still very sad, my friend Tish and I went there and ransacked the cookbooks. In my bargain shopping cookbook frenzy I picked up Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day by Padma Lakshmi. This is a great book, it has lots of pictures, and there are so many things I want to make from it.

While looking for a salad to make for the week, using this giant head of romaine, I found her recipe for A Very Herbaceous Salad. This salad could not be any easier, uses a minimal amount of ingredients and tastes so fresh.
The dressing is made up of
2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar  (The recipe calls for sherry vinegar but not having any I opted for the balsamic)
Salt
Pepper
Whisk ingredients in a large bowl. If not using right away put in the refrigerator to chill.
When ready to eat add to your bowl:
one peeled and sliced English cucumber, 
romaine lettuce cut into sections,
1/3 cup of chopped Italian parsley,
1/3 cup of chopped fresh dill, 
1/3 cup of chopped mint.
Mix well so that dressing is evenly distributed throughout. Serve immediately.

Herby Delicious Salad

Sometimes when I make salad, because it accompanies something else, we don't finish it all. Since there were only two of us eating I didn't use the full head of lettuce, not wanting to waste it. This salad was so good that we finished it all, first before anything else. I foresee myself making this salad more as the weather warms up. The combination of herbs could be mixed up to allow for different flavors, and with summer around the corner, cucumbers are sure to be in future box deliveries. This will be something I will make again and I encourage you to as well.
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Start Of Salad Week - Beet And Orange Salad

A new box has come and the variety is starting to show. After a long cold, wet  winter that brought tons of leafy hearty green the appearance of color and variety is welcome. Hello carrots, favas, and spring onions. Oh and oranges, from Rainbow Valley Orchards. So excited that fruit is going to be appearing. Another surprise that appeared in my mail this week was a new South Central Farms tote bag. It is large and spacious and holds all sorts of fun things, like this weeks delivery of new produce. To see about getting a cool bag or a box of fun spring vegetables and fruit go here.
As the weather is warming up I've decided to make a themed week of salad, mostly because I have lots of lettuce.

The first salad I made is adapted from this recipe for Roasted Beets and Citrus with Feta.  For the salad I used spinach, red romaine, beets, and an orange. I didn't have any feta and used Parmesan, which was good but didn't give the good amount of salty bite that feta has. The dressing was sweeter than I would have liked, but I was still able to taste the Dijon mustard. This salad is also supposed to have grapefruit segments as well, which would have made it even sweeter, but I opted to omit them, replacing them with avocado. We ate this for lunch with a little frozen pizza on the side.

The players

We had a fair amount of leftovers, and ate them the next day. Normally leftover salad doesn't hold up very well but, this one actually tasted great. The dressing lost a little of the sweetness. The lettuce hadn't been totally immersed in dressing and still had a crunch. I also added little goat cheese crumbles which had a nice tang that worked with this beet hued salad of goodness. Make this and enjoy it even more the following day.

This is the salad from the first day, there are oranges in it they all just fell to the bottom. Why does the good stuff always end up under the lettuce?

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A Chip Off The Old Root

These are the roots prewashed, peeled, and sliced. 

I had been thinking about what to do with turnips (again), and had the idea of intermingling them with beets. Then that evolved into making them into chips. Using a mandolin I sliced the beets and turnips into perfect chip size slices.Turning the oven to a low temperature of 250, I put my roots slices in a single layer spread onto two pans. With a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper and a little olive oil, I put them in for about 40 minutes, flipping them half way through.
This was a pretty successful experiment. The turnips crisped up great, and because they are already peppery in flavor, the salt and pepper just added a little something extra. The beets kind of crisped up, I put on a little too much olive oil, so they just kind of roasted. I had leftovers and baked them again to just warm them up, and they crisped up a little more. I read another variation of a beet chip recipe, where they fried them, and they let the beets sit for a couple hours to let them dry out. Allowing them to sit would also help them to crisp as well.
I made a little yogurt dill sauce to dip the chips in. I don't have an exact measurement of how much I put in but it was just some Greek yogurt, a little lemon juice, and dill. The yogurt mellowed out the pepper, and the inclusion of dill works really well with the roots. Dill is one of those foods (or herbs to be specific) that I used to hate, but love, and reminds me of potatoes, salmon, and Scandinavians all things I love.

The finished product, the turnips almost look like real potato chips.

This is just a side note but when beets are cut up they are just so pretty, I think it might be my favorite shade of red. Do you have a favorite vegetable color?

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Greens on Toast

You know those days when you are not super hungry but just want a little something to nosh on. This happens every so often to me due to eating at weird times or having a larger meal and than later not being very hungry, but just wanting a little snack. This is the perfect snack to fill the void.
This recipe is adapted from the book Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys

Red Kale and Spinach

Sauteing greens is such an easy way to use them up, and I normally try to find a more adventurous way to use them up, but when I found this recipe I wanted to try it. Sautee  four chopped garlic cloves with four anchovy fillets, and cayenne in olive oil until everything sizzles, but not brown. Using a mixture of red kale and spinach add to the pan with a little salt and pepper. Cover the greens letting them steam and wilt for five minutes or so letting them still keep their bright green color.

While your greens cook toast some crusty bread by brushing it with olive oil. When your toast is nice and brown take it out and get ready to eat.

A platter of greens and toast

The greens with the inclusion of the anchovies and the extra garlic are so good. A perfect saltiness and with a little squeeze of lemon it was delightful. We had intended to just eat what was on the plate but returned to the kitchen for more bread. So much for not being hungry.

Home Made Green Pop Tarts

I've been thinking a lot about foods that we think of as savory or sweet and making them their opposite. An example of this came up at lunch the other day when my aunt suggested a savory pop tart. This idea intrigued me and I soon began looking for dough recipes. I wanted the dough flaky, and I was afraid using a regular dough recipe would not be the right texture. I was also trying to avoid using shortening. The L.A Times about a month ago, had a feature on  making home made pop tarts. I ended up using their recipe for dough and the rest of the article as a very loose guideline in assembling of the tarts.

Collard and Onion Paste

For the filling I used caramelized onions, collard greens, a mix of feta and fat free ricotta, salt and pepper. I started by caramelizing two good size onions. As the onions were finishing, I tossed in the collards to let them cook down for a few minutes. When everything looked about done, I put my collard and onion mixture into a food processor.

I then added about a cup and a half of crumbled feta and a cup of ricotta to the green mixture. Then comes the filling of my little green pop tarts. The L.A Times has a little bit of a complicated rolling out and cutting process involving the use of a ruler. I ditched the ruler making my pop tarts not very uniform in size, I also knew I had more filling than dough and not wanting to waste any of my tasty green filling, they would not be anemic filled pop tarts.  We spread the filling out on one side of thinly rolled dough, and then placed the other side on top. Cutting each long strip into about four good size pop tarts and leaving one little square tart.

Our finished product was delish. It tasted a little like spankakopita but with the inclusion of caramelized onions it had a slight sweetness to it. They were filling and flaky and once again it's a tart that can be eaten at any time of day. My tarts are not as aesthetically appealing as real pop tarts but it's something to work on. I am already thinking of other vegetables that can be used for filling these retro hand held pastries.

Cooling Tarts

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