Archives for January 2010

I’m Cold!

January 13, 2010 By Anne Simpson

And that’s all I can really think about at the moment, so alas, I have nothing witty to say. Or even remotely interesting. Have I mentioned that I’m cold? I thought it was supposed to warm up this week, but so far I’m still cold.

But making lemon ginger tea cake helped a little. So did the hot cup of (decaf) coffee I enjoyed with it. If you’re cold too, wherever you are, maybe it will help you, too.

I originally saw this recipe in a magazine, but I changed it up quite a bit by reducing the sugar, eliminating the oil, adding applesauce and changing a few other things so that it now only barely resembles the original recipe. I like to think that my changes made it even better, but I can’t say that for sure because I never actually tried the original. I do know that my first attempt flopped miserably, but my second attempt was delicious!

Lemon Ginger Tea Cake
1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 TBSP oat bran
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 cup sugar
juice and zest of one lemon (or 1/4 tsp powdered lemon peel and 1/4 cup lemon juice)
3/4 cup plain, vanilla or lemon full-fat yogurt
1/2 cup applesauce
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1″ piece of ginger, peeled and grated

Whisk the flours, oat bran, baking powder and soda, salt and powdered ginger in a small bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Stir the flour mixture into the yogurt mixture until just combined. Pour the mixture into a greased 9×5 loaf pan and bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Keeping the cake in the pan, cool it on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then carefully remove from pan and cool completely.

You can tweak this recipe to fit your own desires, but a few things are important to remember. Since the oil has been removed, there has to be some fat in the recipe, which, in my version, comes from the full-fat yogurt. Fat-free or low-fat yogurt will not work as well (that was my mistake in the first version). Also, you really can’t reduce the sugar too much more, although I think honey would work well, at least for half the amount. (I would have tried the honey myself, but I’m out of it at the moment.) The original recipe called for corn meal instead of oat bran, and I just used the oat bran out of personal preference. Also, the original recipe called for poppy seeds, which I don’t have and my DH can’t have, so I did not use those. They would add a nice touch, though.

This recipe falls under the QUICK bread category, so yes, it’s QUICK! You do have to take a few minutes to zest and juice the lemon, and then to peel and grate the ginger, but with the right tools, those tasks go quickly.

And, yes, it’s EASY, now that I figured out the right proportions of certain ingredients!

It has a few “special” ingredients, like lemon and ginger (meaning they are not necessarily staples) and poppy seeds if you use them, but all in all, it’s still CHEAP. Ginger, in fact, is very cheap, but it sure packs a punch! More bang for your buck.

And yes, this revised version is HEALTHY. I added some whole wheat flour and the oat bran for extra fiber (although corn meal surely has fiber as well, I think oats are more nutritious overall.). I also removed the vegetable oil and replaced it with applesauce, a much better choice. Furthermore I reduced the sugar. As I said before, honey would be an even better choice. Lemon has vitamin C, and yogurt has great probiotics for your digestive tract.

Enjoy. And stay warm!

2 Comments Filed Under: Dessert, On The Table Tagged With: cake

Vintage

January 11, 2010 By Anne Simpson

I love vintage cookbooks and vintage recipes, for multiple reasons, but probably mostly because they have stood the test of time. And if they have stood the test of time, that implies an authenticity that appeals to me. Unfortunately, I only have one vintage cook book in my collection so far: you can see in the picture above how well-used and well-loved it is! As I find them, I’m going to add more to my collection, but for now I have this one and use it often.

This particular vintage cookbook is the 1951 edition of the Fannie Farmer cookbook, revised by Fannie Farmer’s nephew’s wife. What I like about it, in particular, is that it gets down to the basics with recipes for stuff most of us just buy at the grocery store (chocolate syrup, for example). For a frugal person like myself, who is also concerned about feeding healthy food to her family, it’s an invaluable resource. But I also love looking at its detailed instructions for more complicated stuff, like wedding cakes and other elegant desserts.

I’ve had it for years, but I just realized yesterday that within my beloved vintage cookbook was a gem even greater than I had imagined: a recipe for brownies that is not only vintage, but THE original. Now, no one knows for sure if Fannie Farmer invented the recipe herself or merely included it in her cookbook, but what is known for sure is that the 1906 edition contained the first ever publication of the brownie recipe. That recipe is the same one, unchanged, that I found in my 1951 edition.

I like to make brownies from scratch because I feel that it is at least healthier than using a mix, but I always have to cringe a little at the massive amounts of oil/butter and sugar involved. It struck me as I was mixing up the Fannie Farmer version that it called for a lot less butter, a lot less sugar, and really, a lot less of everything. It did use a smaller pan, 8×8, as opposed to the usual 9×13, which made sense, but then I noticed that it said serves 16. Or more. It really says “or more”!

That made me curious and I started investigating a little. Sure enough, one brownie recipe I frequently used from my Betty Crocker cookbook called for more than double the ingredients, baked in the same size pan, but still said that it made 16 servings. So… twice the amount of ingredients, but the same amount of servings. The famous Bakers One Bowl Brownie recipe also calls for more than double the ingredients, but at least it’s made in a 9×13 pan and says that it serves 24 (not quite 16 doubled, but it’s an improvement). However, I found a copy of that same recipe on Allrecipes, and the contributor says it makes 12 servings. I have a feeling that is a more realistic number and that the average American baker cuts her pan of brownies into 12 or 16 pieces rather than 24. At any rate, I wasn’t even sure I could cut my 8×8 square pan into 16 pieces, but I did! Normally, I would have cut it into 12 pieces, and for me, a 9×13 would yield 16.

All that to say… ladies and gentlemen, we have super-sized the brownie! Our grandparents’ generation never had to deal with obesity, at least not on the level we do today, in part because they exhibited self-control and moderation when it came to portion sizes. Using Fannie Farmer’s original recipe, one brownie is at least half the calories (and half the sugar!) than the ones we’re used to today.

Recipe: The Original Teeny Tiny Brownie

Ingredients

THE Original Teeny Tiny Brownie*
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

Instructions

Heat the chocolate and butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat until melted and smooth. Add remaining ingredients and mix together. Spread evenly into a well-greased 8×8 square pan. Bake about 30 minutes at 300F (optionally, she says you can bake them at 350F for 25 minutes for a more cake-like brownie).
*slightly modified by myself. I reduced the sugar a bit.

2 Comments Filed Under: Dessert, On The Table Tagged With: brownies

The Antidote to the Frigidity of Winter

January 5, 2010 By Anne Simpson

Yes, frigid is really the only word that adequately describes the weather around these parts lately. Frigid. And I mean frigid. Our winter has already been record-breaking, at least in terms of snow-fall, and it feels like we’re trying to break the lowest temperature record as well. So instead of being like any normal person and preparing a hearty, soul-warming meal of soup or chili or the like, I went the opposite direction and made a breezy, summery dish for dinner. I guess I wanted to pretend I was in sunny Florida or some other warm place where the temperature doesn’t ever go below zero.

The very ingredients in this recipe conjure up images of tropical islands and beautiful moderate climates: lemon, orange, ginger, etc. If you, like me, cannot afford a real tropical escape, try this dish instead. If you really want to feel as if you are enjoying the summer sunshine, pull out the grill to cook the chicken. Or just stay inside and broil it, like I did.

I do not know where I originally found this recipe; it was a clipping in my notebook full of recipe clippings and I forget where this clipping originated. Of course, I changed it up a bit, like I always do, so here you go:

Soul-Warming Tropical-ish Chicken
1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 6-oz. cup of plain yogurt
2 TBSP orange juice
juice and zest of 1 lemon
3 TBSP olive or coconut oil
1 TBSP dried parsley (or 1/4 cup fresh)
1/2 tsp powdered ginger (or fresh grated ginger)
1/2 tsp paprika (or more, to taste)

Place the chicken thighs in a medium container with a lid. In a separate dish (I used my Quick Shake container from Tupperware) , combine remaining ingredients and mix until thoroughly blended. Pour the marinade over the chicken, reserving 1/2 cup. Refrigerate and allow to marinate for at least 1 hour, or up to 8 hours. When ready to cook, set oven to broil. Place chicken thighs on broiler pan and broil for about 30 minutes, or until juices run clear. In the last 5-10 minutes, baste with reserved 1/2 cup of marinade.

Using fresh herbs is best, but the dried counterparts work as well. Adjust the amount of paprika to your taste (I can’t use too much of it for my DH’s sake).

This is a very QUICK recipe, although it does require at least an hour of marinating time. To solve that problem, you can quickly mix the marinade and prep the chicken in the morning, and then just pop it in the broiler (or on the grill) and have dinner ready in 30 minutes.

It’s very EASY, also. Nothing difficult here.

It’s pretty CHEAP, too, although to be honest I don’t always have fresh lemons on hand because they are more expensive than lemon juice. (If you don’t happen to have them on hand, you can just use a tablespoon or two of bottled lemon juice.) I happened to get some reduced lemons, though, and I needed to use them up before they went completely bad (Waste not!). The other ingredients are not expensive at all; even the yogurt is less than $0.50 if you buy it on sale. Boneless skinless chicken thighs are much cheaper than boneless skinless breasts, and they’re juicier, too. (They’re also smaller, but 1 lb will make a dinner for 2 or 3 people.)

After the onslaught of sugary Christmas treats, this recipe is refreshingly HEALTHY. Yogurt is very healthy; I love to use it in cooking and baking whenever I can. Fresh citrus provides a lot of vitamin C, and (interesting cool fact I just read) ginger actually helps your body break down the protein in meat, so it’s a great addition to meat dishes.

This chicken was also quite delicious: I served it with Coconut Rice on the side and it was a great combination. It was a wonderful summery meal… next time I might actually eat it in the summer!

2 Comments Filed Under: Dinner, On The Table Tagged With: chicken

New Year’s Brunch

January 1, 2010 By Anne Simpson

After staying up late to usher in the new year, New Year’s Day is the perfect day for a brunch. And since you will probably be rolling out of bed at 10:00am (or later), you won’t want to spend the whole day fixing a gorgeous brunch. This is an all-in-one, easy to make, breakfast and lunch in one fell swoop, being equal parts French toast, grilled cheese, and scrambled eggs. Oh, yeah, with bacon thrown in. It’s a twist on the traditional Monte Cristo sandwich, which is made of French fried bread with turkey meat and cheese inside.

I have made regular Monte Cristos before, but my DH mentioned the other day that he really enjoyed the Monte Cristos he had eaten at a local restaurant his co-workers love. When he was describing the sandwich as being filled with eggs and cheese, I was curious because I’d never heard of such a thing before. Since he only worked until 11:00am today (New Year’s Eve), I wanted to surprise him with a yummy brunch when he came home from work, so I tried my hand at my own version of Monte Cristo Breakfast Sandwiches. Yum!

This recipe makes 2, but you can easily double it for larger quantities.

Monte Cristo Breakfast Sandwiches

3 eggs, divided (not separated)

4 TBSP milk (divided)

1/2 tsp Garlic and Herb seasoning blend

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

2 slices cheddar cheese

2 slices bacon, cooked

4 slices bread (a thick, heavy bread is best)

Beat 2 eggs together with 2 TBSP of milk, the seasoning blend and pepper. Fry in a small frying pan until thoroughly cooked. Set aside.

Beat the remaining egg together with 2 more TBSP of milk until thoroughly blended. Heat a greased griddle or frying pan over medium heat. While pan is heating, collect your ingredients near the stove, because you will have to move quickly to assemble the sandwiches: bread, cheese, bacon and eggs should all be nearby.

Soak the bread slices in the egg/milk mixture like French toast. Lay them in the frying pan for about 30 seconds or less, just long enough to cook the egg on one side. Flip them over and layer the cheese, bacon and eggs on two of the slices. Top with the remaining slices. Flip once or twice more (carefully) until thoroughly cooked and warmed through.

Remove to serving plates, and if desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar (I opted out of the powdered sugar on mine, for obvious reasons!)

It’s slightly more involved than French Toast or scrambled eggs would be by themselves, but it’s still QUICK.

It’s very EASY, too. The hardest part is working quickly enough to assemble the sandwiches before you burn the French toast, but if you have everything handy, even that is easy.

It’s more expensive than French toast, grilled cheese or scrambled eggs would be on their own, but for a special brunch, it’s a pretty CHEAP yet hearty option.

It packs a LOT of calories but it’s still pretty HEALTHY. If you eat it as a brunch, that’s two meals together, so you can afford the extra calories. If you prefer, you can use turkey bacon to reduce the calorie and fat count even further. If you really wanted to, you could scramble the eggs with water instead of milk, but as you know, I don’t consider milk (even whole milk) to be unhealthy. Be sure to use healthy whole grain bread, also (I used homemade whole wheat bread). And serve it with a sizable portion of fresh fruit to make a complete and balanced meal.