Sweet Sunday: Lime Coconut Bars

This is a riff on Mark Bittman's recipe in "How to Cook Everything" called, "Gabriella's Lemon Squares" and while they weren't picture perfect coming out of the pan, they sure did taste good. I love unsweetened, toasted coconut's nutty naturally sweet flavor.

Actually, I think my problems getting them out of the pan could have been solved by using a metal baking pan with square corners and lining it with well-buttered parchment paper as I don't think the Pyrex pan's rounded corners did me any favors. Next time  - and oh my friends, there will definitely be a next time - I won't spread the coconut up the sides as it made cutting the bars more difficult. With the coconut on top, it's easier to start your cuts in the middle of the pan and work out towards the edges. I even think a metal pastry scraper with a straight edge would work well.

The original recipe did not call for zest, but I added that to both the crust and the filling as well as upping the lime juice to 1/3 cup.

Oh - and let's just get this out of the way. I know some of you have already thought of this and those who haven't, I want to share this with you because I had this song in my head the entire time I was cooking as well as the time it took to write this post!

... aaaaaand you're welcome!

RECIPE: LIME COCONUT BARS

Green Bean and Almond Soup and Notes on Vegetable Stock

This recipe was part of my "cook the pantry and the crisper" effort this week. After making two cakes with almond flour, I had a surplus. I also had a just-passed-prime, but still in great shape, pound of green beans. Searching "green beans" and almond meal". I found this recipe on Clotilde Dusoulier's "Chocolate & Zucchini" site. Ms. Dusoulier adapted this recipe from Rose Carrarini's (of Rose Bakery) book, "Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery".

Although not as pristine as when i bought them, these were super crunchy and fresh tasting.

It's a pureed soup of green beans, aromatics and vegetable stock thickened with ground almonds.  Green beans and almonds taste great together and using ground almonds as a thickener is a win for the gluten-intolerant. The resulting texture isn't silky smooth as most pureed soups, but the combination of flavors is very good. It's not a BIG! GIGANTIC! flavor-buster soup, but not everything has to be - just great ingredients and a lovely flavor. I ate this with salad and cheese toast.

In my version, I use leeks instead of onions and celery with no carrots (as there were none in the crisper). I prefer leeks over onions in a lot of soups and love the flavor. Leeks can take some cleaning, as there can be a lot of dirt in between the layers but I generally clean dirt of of the outside, trim off the ends, and the fibrous dark green parts (which I save for stock), cut them as called for and then wash them by soaking and swishing them around in cold water, letting them sit  for a couple of minutes to let the dirt drop to the bottom of the bowl then drying them off in a salad spinner. This method is easy and fast.

In most instances, I trim and cut up my leeks and then I wash them.
Just remember to clean your board and knife before moving on to the next vegetable.

Vegetable Stock: I cooked both wild rice and barley this week and used the left-over water as a basis for vegetable stock. Water in which I've cooked chickpeas also make a really tasty starter for stock. To that I added the green tops and trimmings from the leeks, some celery leaves, a bay leaf and a few stems of thyme. During the week I throw appropriate (where the veg isn't too strong-flavored or bitter and would overpower the taste) trimmings into a freezer bag and stuff it in the freezer. I don't use them if they've been in the freezer over two weeks.

The cooking water from many beans and grains - if you don't use it in the dish for which you cooked them - make a good base, too. White or light-colored beans - especially cannellini - tend to be good. I don't use bean cooking water when the resulting product is strongly colored or too cloudy. I let the left over water from the barley sit for about a half an hour and let the starch particles sink to the bottom while pouring off the less-cloudy water.

Vegetable Stock Guidelines: Heat up a big pot on the stove on medium-high. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Throw in the left-over vegetable trimmings that you have cut up roughly (the smaller the better) and a couple of pinches of salt. Depending on your preference, cook them without coloring them or caramelize them a little, adjusting the heat as necessary, along with 1 or two smashed cloves of garlic. Add a bay leaf, a few pepper corns, a tablespoon of tomato paste (if you have some) and cook for a few more minutes. Add half-dozen sprigs of parsley and a few sprigs of other herbs (if you have them). Add the left-over bean or grain cooking water, or just water to a ratio that works for the amount of vegetables and trimmings. Commonly, a pound of vegetables to a gallon of water, but adjust down (or up) depending on your vegetables.

Bring the pot to a boil, turn the heat down and cover so that the liquid comes to  a medium simmer. Let this cook, covered, for 45 minutes to 1 hour. It doesn't help this to cook it longer and by 1 hour, you've extracted the maximum flavor from the vegetables. Take off the heat and allow the stock to cool to lukewarm. Set a large strainer over a bowl and ladle the solids into the strainer (pushing down on them a little to extract so that you can pick up the pot and pour the remainder of the liquid through the strainer. Push down on the remaining solids a little to exact any extra liquid.  Allow this to sit for an hour or until completely cool. Pour this liquid, making sure that any sediment remains at the bottom of the bowl, through a double-layer of cheesecloth.  Cover and store in refrigerator for 2 days or in an airtight container (or multiple containers, in smaller quantities) in the freezer for a couple of months.

(LEFT) take the pan off heat when the almond meal is about this color. Have a plate ready (to cool it down)
because it will continue to cook. (RIGHT) Toasted and un-toasted almond meal comparison.

RECIPE: GREEN BEAN and ALMOND SOUP

Sweet Sunday: Whole Wheat Apple Muffins and Camera Advice

So, on my second weekend of cooking something dessert-y for my friend to take to her church, I was scrambling a little to get them made and cooled -- all the while shooting lovely (or as lovely as I can manage), informative pictures.  Except...

...when I checked on the images, there was nothing. I'd forgotten to take the card out of my laptop and put it back in the camera. Yes, the display clearly shows, a "NO CARD" message, but once I got my settings for the pictures, I wasn't looking at the display. What's the lesson?

Stand-in apples - taken this week as I made the apple muffins a week ago last Sunday.

There is a setting to enable notification in the viewfinder - big and bright, flashing, yellow CARD, that I have since changed from "Disabled" to "Enabled". You might want to check that out on your own camera.

Fortunately, I had set a couple of the muffins aside for Lynn and was able to memorialize the muffin. For me, an inconvenience - these aren't professional photo shoots - just a pain in the hiney.

Anyway, these are very good muffins that I made pretty much as specified by Deb Perelman over at Smitten Kitchen. The only change I made was to, right after the muffins came out, sprinkle yet a little more brown sugar on top. A few people mentioned that they liked the extra crunch. As Mr. Perelman states in the recipe (which she adapted), the original recipe says you'll get a dozen, but you're likely to get more, from a standard-size muffin tin - I got 18.

Apples! There are glorious apples in the market and a Granny Smith isn't your only option for baking when you want an apple that will hold its form. The picture at the top of this post has Northern Spy, Fameuse and Skaar, but the apples I used for these muffins were, per the farmer, "mystery" apples and holy buckets they were good eating AND good bakers.

Beyond the addition of the additional brown sugar after the muffins came out of the oven, I did not change this recipe and so click the link below to go to Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.

RECIPE: WHOLE WHEAT APPLE MUFFINS at SMITTEN KITCHEN
Makes 12 - 18 muffins.

Lamb Kefta Tagine with Tomatoes and Couscous

I meant to make this last week but ran out of time and stuck the lamb back in the freezer. A friend came to visit this weekend from afar - 17 hour plane ride. We had a lot of catching up to do and I didn't want to be fussing around. I don't multi-task all that well: I can cook a lot or I can talk a lot but I can't do both and I wanted to do the latter but have a good meal. I made this in about an hour, headed down to the airport and when we got back, reheated it, made the couscous, heated up some pita bread in the oven, made a simple salad of greens and vinaigrette and dinner was ready in about 20 minutes.

This is a dinner that you can cook in parts - sauce first - and store it before making the meatballs. It was eaten fast enough that I didn't have any left over to freeze, but I'm guessing it would store very well.

The only part that requires about 20 minutes of continuous effort is making the meatballs. The original recipe specified that the meatballs be the size of large cherries. I made mine about 1" in diameter and added an egg - also not called-for in the original recipe. I used a small ice cream scoop to portion the meatballs. This recipe is a definite keeper and when tomatoes aren't in season, canned will do just fine.

RECIPE: LAMB KEFTA TAGINE WITH TOMATOES and COUSCOUS

Friday Dinner: Baked Ziti with Tomato, Mozzarella and Sausage

 The original recipe says that it will serve 4, but you can easily cut it in half to serve that many, especially if you extend it by adding some extra meat (left-over pot roast from last week), as we did.

Lynn found this recipe and we both like it for several reasons: mixing the seasoned ricotta with the cooked pasta - while the pasta is still warm, before assembling the remainder of the dish distributes the ricotta mixture beautifully throughout, it's not overly sauce-y, and it tastes great when you augment the sausage with leftover meat. In this case left-over roast beef, but we've also used pork.

Oh yes - and it's really delicious.

 If you assemble it before-hand (over an hour or more before the final baking), I recommend making it saucy-er as the pasta will absorb a good deal of the liquids. If you're planning on sticking it in the oven right after assembly, you're good to go.

Lynn hasn't added the mountain o'mozzarella yet and you can see how much there is in the pan already!

It doesn't take very long to cook once you've assembled it, it's just a matter of heating everything up and melting the cheese.


RECIPE: BAKED ZITI with TOMATO MOZZARELLA, SAUSAGE and ROAST BEEF