Savory Clafoutis (Savory Flaugnarde)

I’m a bit of a clafoutis addict. I’ve been known to make it 4 times in one week during cherry season. I love the dense custardy base so much that when I can’t get my hands on cherries, I run off the rails into whatever’s-in-the-fridge territory.

My go-to clafoutis recipe is this one (disclaimer: I’ve never actually used the kirsch). It calls for yogurt instead of the traditional heavy cream, allowing me to justify eating the whole thing myself over a couple of days. I suspect it’s still not good for me, but that doesn’t concern me, as the amount of joy it brings me is monumental.

When I make the savory version I leave out the cherries and vanilla, cut the sugar way down, add freshly ground pepper and other spices, and mix in vegetables and vegetarian sausage. Today I went a little overboard and started by melting butter into olive oil and slowly caramelizing some onions for what seemed like ages.

Meanwhile, I chopped red and green bell pepper, vegetarian sausage, and a zucchini, and set them aside.  I made the clafoutis base, adding a lot of freshly ground pepper, hot paprika, sweet paprika, aleppo pepper, a little herbes de provence, a big splash of soy sauce, a lot of fresh thyme leaves, and 2 cloves of very thinly sliced garlic.  Note that I didn’t add any salt – between the soy and sausage there’s plenty. At this point I decided I wanted more batter, so I added a couple of eggs and a bit more yogurt.  No measuring, that’s how I roll, I just adjusted the seasoning a bit to compensate.

When the onions finally caramelized I dumped the veggies and sausage into a buttered dish. Typically I use a clafoutis dish whether I’m making sweet or savory, but today I decided to make big tall pieces in a square glass dish.  I poured the batter over the veggies and sausage, then strewed the onions around the top, and pressed them down with tongs so they were wet with the batter but near the top. This went into the oven for about 40 minutes, and voila.

It must be mentioned that clafoutis by definition involves cherries. The internet tells me that a clafoutis with any other fruit is actually a flaugnarde. I’ve bastardized the clafoutis one step further, so I guess this counts as a savory flaugnarde.  I bet there’s a proper name for what I’m making here, but I don’t know it. If you know, do tell! Regardless, I highly suggest making a cherry clafoutis, or any kind of flaugnarde. In addition to being delicious, these make quite the convenient office breakfast the following morning.

Dulce de Leche Brownies

I’m not sure why, but I’ve had dulce de leche on the mind lately. I’ve been wanting to make it myself, and have been looking for a vehicle/excuse. One night I was considering what to make for my teacher’s birthday and it came to me: dulce de leche brownies. A few seconds with a search engine and I realized that this was nothing new, so I followed the recipe on David Lebovitz’s site (including the dulce de leche recipe that he links to).

Slightly disappointed with the texture (mine turned out a bit more cakey than his look), I’ve spent a bit of time since trolling cooking forums and recipes, and I’m wondering if I didn’t overcook the brownies slightly. The recipe called for 35-45 minutes of baking; I removed these from the oven after 35, but I suspect that my oven runs a bit hot. Also, I read that many people drop the cooking temperature 25 degrees (Fahrenheit) when using glass bakeware… I had never heard of such a thing! I lined my Pyrex with aluminum foil, but I’m not sure how much of a difference that would make. At some point I’ll try this recipe again in a metal pan, and yet again with a lower temperature. It’s funny to obsess about getting something right when you aren’t even particularly interested in eating the end product – I’m just not a huge fan of chocolate. However, I really prefer a more fudgy brownie, and I want to know how to get it right.

For the record, I doubled the recipe and made two pans of these, one with walnuts and one without. Everyone gave positive reviews, but those who tried both preferred them with nuts.

Ginger & White Peach Scones

It has been so, so long since I’ve posted here. I should change the title to something involving Languishing. I think about it, I bake a lot, I made dinners for myself sometimes… and yet somehow actually putting photos up and saying something is beyond my reach. My track record these past couple of years speaks for itself, so let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that all of a sudden I’m going to be posting every week. That said, one post can be a beginning, right? Here’s hoping this will be the one. Ha.

With the loss of Thé Adoré in my work neighborhood, I’ve been hard pressed to find a scone to my liking. I like them moist not dry, and more flaky than crumbly, but not so flaky that they lose their scone-ness. Having threatened to make scones for years, the past month or so has found me playing around with a couple of recipes. The texture isn’t up to par with the tea spot I used to go to in Cambridge, or the ones that Thé Adoré made, but they’re nevertheless a damned good product. Coworker approved!

Lately I’ve been using this recipe, with a few modifications. To make the scones pictured here, I left out the currants, added 1 cup of chopped dried white peaches, and added a generous 1/2 cup of chopped crystallized ginger. I made these additions *after* cutting the butter in, as I find using a pastry cutter on butter while there are other lumps in the way is a little weird. Just be careful not to over-mix!

Do you have a scone recipe that you swear by, or even just really love? Please share. I’d like to make this even better.

Snow Day Pancakes

snow day pancakes topped with apple-cherry compote and blueberry greek yogurt; fried sweet plantains; coffee w/soy milk.

I woke up at 6:30 to the first of my alarms (yes, I require a number of them), looked at my phone, and saw I had an alert text from my employer notifying me that the university is closed. Snow day!! I looked out the window, turned off the other alarms, and went back to bed.

When I finally got up just before 10, I wanted pancakes. I made coffee and sat down at my computer to look at recipes. Oops – it’s now afternoon, and I just lost 3 hours to food blogs and news and checking in on friends. Now I’m running back and forth between the computer and stove, the stewed apples & cherries are cooled, and I’ve fried some plantains. It’s a snow day, so I think that counts as industrious.

The recipe below yielded chewy (somewhat dense yet pretty tender) pancakes that I enjoyed, but if you like very light pancakes it’s not for you. Between the buckwheat flour and the whole wheat flour, they were definitely hearty. I’m not a diner pancake fan, so they worked for me.

SNOW DAY PANCAKES
Adapted from About.com (I know… I was looking for something simple)
Makes 6 4″ pancakes.

Ingredients:

1/2 c buckwheat flour
1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/4 c whole wheat flour
1 1/4 t baking powder
1 1/2 T granulated sugar
1/4 t salt
1 large egg
3/4 + 2T coconut milk
1 T melted butter

Method:

* Dump all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk together.
* Whisk all of the wet ingredients together in a different bowl.
* Dump the wet mixture into the dry and stir until just combined (small lumps ok).
* Cook like you cook pancakes, silly! I used a 1/4 cup measure to scoop batter.

Unexpected trip to the NW

Stable Heartbeat

Liar

I lied. I bought a new knife, and it wasn’t crafted by the descendant of a samurai sword maker. Well, not that I know of, at least. Still, this Shun 8″ chef’s knife was handmade in Japan, which is an improvement over most of my blades.

I should also come clean on something that we all know by now: I’m a terrible blogger. I have made brisket not one but two times, and I slow cooked lamb on another occasion. These are major accomplishments for me, as I tend toward vegetarian food at home. I took pictures… hopefully I can will myself to post them. Ha. Right now it’s just too nice out to think about the internet.

I hope Spring has arrived wherever you are, or something equally lovely.

Hunger Strike / Liberal Elitist Succotash

It’s Women’s History Month! It’s always some month or other, I know, but I noticed this in a newsletter and was reminded that since the 2008 presidential campaign, a friend and I had been meaning to watch a movie about the women’s suffrage movement, Iron Jawed Angels. I’m interested in history, but I happen to have a really miserable memory, so generally historical information is met by me as if I was hearing it for the first time, even if I’ve been privy to it before. My friend R was rightly shocked when I suggested we stage a fancy tea party (complete with finger sandwiches and cakes) for a viewing. “They were called Iron Jawed Angels because they were on hunger strike.” Oops. Guess I should have figured that one out.

Looking for a more humble meal, I settled upon making something with the can of black-eyed peas that I’d recently purchased. I’ve only had black-eyed peas a few times – I’ve never been a huge fan of legumes – so I wasn’t immediately sure what to make with them. I knew I just wanted to spoon something over rice, so I settled on a concoction resembling a hybrid of succotash (peas instead of lima beans) and warm salad. A bit of a kitchen sink approach, and spicy, but filling and satisfying.

the first incarnation of ingredients. a number were added (including the liberal elitist baby arugula!), one was dropped.

Liberal Elitist Succotash*
(quantities are approximated… it isn’t fussy… but this made about four meal sized servings)

• a bit of bacon, chopped
• 1 big handful mini organic smoky pork sausages, cut in thirds
• 1 can black eyed peas
• 1 small can sweet corn
• 1 small butternut squash, chopped
• 1 very large shallot, chopped
• 2 fingerling potatoes, chopped
• 1 chioggia beet, chopped
• 1 big handful baby carrots, halved or thirded
• 2 or 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1/2 a large red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 a medium orange bell pepper, chopped
• 1 handful sugar snap peas, chopped
• 2 watermelon radishes, halved and sliced
• 4 small handfuls baby arugula, torn or chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 T butter
• pepper, freshly ground
• salt
• a few dashes Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 t dijon mustard
• juice of 1 meyer lemon
• a few big splashes Eastern North Carolina BBQ Sauce
• 2 cups brown rice, steamed (will yield more)

As you can tell, I just sort of threw everything together based on what I had in the fridge. This is more a list of ingredients than a recipe, but if you must know (ha), my basic method was as follows: Roast the squash, potatoes, carrots, beet, and garlic with salt & pepper. Meanwhile, sautee the bacon and sausages until the bacon fat has melted away and the sausages start to brown. Add the butter (I didn’t use much bacon), shallots, celery, and Worcestershire and stir occasionally until beginning to caramelize. Add the black eyed peas and corn and allow the flavors to blend for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally. Mix the vinegar, lemon juice, and mustard in another bowl. Add the radishes, bell peppers, snap peas, and liquid to the pan and cook for about another minute, adding salt and pepper (and more Carolina Sauce) to taste. Spoon over steamed brown rice with a handful of arugula on each serving, for the diner to stir in/wilt at their leisure. Serve with Mozart Lemonade (tequila & lemonade on rocks).

The food turned out to be good, but the film didn’t fare as well. Maybe I’m just a fan of period pieces, but I found it really distracting that modern music was used while we were watching something that took place 90 years ago. They marched in Washington to Lauren Hill?! No. I also could have done without the fictional love interest, and though the fictional Senator’s wife worked well with the story, I wished they would have stuck with what happened. As R put it, what happened was drama enough. The biggest problem other than the music, for me, was that someone makes reference to the women being called Iron Jawed Angels before they go on hunger strike in the movie. Bad editing? That seems like a pretty glaring mistake (it had us questioning the meaning of the title).

Poorly executed though the film was, I’m glad I watched it. What an inspiring story about standing up for what is right in the world. I woke up this morning feeling gratitude that a group of women 90 years ago gave up one of my favorite things about life – food – so that I could vote (as it happens, one of my other very favorite things). Thanks, ladies.

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I’d like to give a little shout out to a couple of ladies who are fighting the good fight in current matters of civil rights: Alysia Melnick, Public Policy Counsel at the Maine Civil Liberties Union, and Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (who I had the pleasure of working along side on the Obama campaign) of The Progressive Project. Both of these ladies do so much to (among other things) advance the rights of LGBT citizens, I am at once consistently inspired by them, and reminded that I’m lazier than I ought to be.

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*R, sorry for offending your Southern sensibilities by even using succotash in the name of this dish.

Back on the Bento Wagon (I Hope)

January 4th (clockwise from top left): cinnamon raisin bagel (squashed into the bowl); assorted sweet pepper slices and sugar snap peas, herbes de provence hummus (w/garlic, lemon, green olive, etc.); greek yogurt, sour cherry preserves.

Blade Problem

Favorite

I finally hung my second magnetic knife block the other night.

I really love knives. I love the way they slice and chop, I love the way they look, and I love the way they feel to hold. Looking at all (well, many) of my knives lined up in two rows, however, reminds me that my collection is borne more of a compulsion to acquire than careful selection.