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Posts tagged ‘Molly_Wizenberg’

Jun 8

Homemade Granola


Inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s piece “Breakfast Outside the Box” in this month’s Bon Appetit, I made granola last night while listening to the new The New Pornographers album (it is so fun, so good, so lovely). I grew up eating my aunt’s homemade granola (with ice cold milk, not yogurt…I have the same preference to this day), which she would drop off in a mason jar every couple of months. So I snapped up the chance not only to make granola, but Molly’s granola (see here, here and here for more on my adoration for all things M.W. from Orangette). Anyway, while I may have burnt my granola just a bit, I added a little pinch of sugar and craisins which sweetened the whole thing up again. Here’s the recipe:

Everyday Granola
Serve this with yogurt or milk—or eat it plain as a snack.
Makes about 5 cups

Recipe by Molly Wizenberg

Ingredients
* 3 cups old-fashioned oats
* 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
* 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
* 3 tablespoons (packed) brown sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/4 teaspoon (generous) salt
* 1/3 cup honey
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 cup assorted dried fruit

Preparation
Preheat oven to 300°F. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Mix first 7 ingredients in large bowl. Stir honey and oil in saucepan over medium-low heat until smooth. Pour honey mixture over oat mixture; toss. Spread on prepared sheet. Bake until golden, stirring every 10 minutes, about 40 minutes. Place sheet on rack. Stir granola; cool. Mix in fruit. DO AHEAD Can be made 1 week ahead. Store airtight.

Before oven


Baked

Jan 19

1 Comment

Scottish Scones

On Sunday night, feeling the usual excitement of watching the Golden Globes yet restless with just sitting, watching and secretly guessing at the winners, I picked up Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life to find a delicious Sunday treat that wouldn’t take too much time to make, and would be a nice snack in the morning on my way to work. It is yet another recipe from Molly’s book that has pleasantly found its way into my kitchen, and inevitably, into my stomach. Full disclosure before I dive in: I have a really bad habit of not following a recipe generally but especially if it involves 1) raspberries or 2) chocolate. Of course, with both items in my possession, I breezed past Molly’s condition that to make these you use non-wet, neat foods, like raisins or cranberries and not wet, messy foods. What did I use instead? Wet, messy raspberries and chocolate. Not only did I go astray form the recipe and totally ignore Molly’s condition to use the recipe, I used too much of both. Way too much. The scones turned out more like a chocolate and raspberry pie than a Scottish Scone with lovely flavorings of them. Yet…they were still really good and gooey.

Scottish Scones

Source: Orangette

This recipe was given to my sister by a good friend of hers who, appropriately, is Scottish. I pass it on to you only on the condition that you try making it first with something neat and non-wet, such as raisins, currants, dried apricots, citrus zest, or candied ginger. Wetter things, such as frozen berries, will send you into murky territory, and it’s best to learn the lay of the land first.

½ c milk (I’ve used skim with no adverse effects, although it might be best to use one with more fat and body)
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ stick (2 ounces) unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
3 Tbs sugar (I often choose the finely milled raw cane sugar—hippie sugar, as I call it)
Flavorful additions of your choice, to taste (see above for ideas; if you use berries, make sure they are frozen)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beat together the milk and the egg and then set aside. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Rub the butter into the flour mixture, working until you have no lumps bigger than a pea. Add the sugar and whatever additions you choose, and stir or toss to mix. Pour the wet ingredients into the dries, reserving just a tad of the milk-egg mixture to use as a glaze. Bring dough together gently with a wooden spoon.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured counter and knead it no more than 12 times. [Apparently, twelve is the magic number here; surpass it at your own risk.] Pat dough into a round approximately ½-inch thick, and cut into 8 or 12 wedges. Place on an ungreased baking sheet or a Silpat, if you have one. Using a pastry brush, glaze wedges.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden. Cool on a rack.

Jan 8

1 Comment

Easy Dinner: Scallops with Salad, Dutch Baby Pancake

Scallops, while expensive in the off season, make for a sure-fire quick dinner and are really delicious. Here’s how we did it up:

1. In a lukewarm (kosher) salt bath, let scallops soak for ten minutes (technique courtesy of Thomas Keller in Ad Hoc), then pat dry with paper towels, and salt/pepper
2. Meanwhile, fry a few strips of bacon, set aside to cool
3. In same pan as bacon, cook scallops on med-high heat, 4 minutes each side (let them cook a little longer if they aren’t caramelizing)
4. Meanwhile, toss a salad. We use the Organic Farms Italian Salad with Annie’s Goddess dressing, chopped up the forementioned bacon, added some herb croutons and grated blue cheese for the top.

And a SUPER easy dessert from (you guessed it) Molly Wizenberg: Dutch Baby Pancake. I overcooked by about 30 seconds, so keep your eye on that baby as the timer counts down. However, it was still so good…

Jimmy’s Dutch Baby Pancakes

Jimmy likes to make his babies in two 6-inch cast-iron skillets, but you can also make this recipe in a single 10- or 11-inch one.

For the pancakes:
4 Tbs unsalted butter (or, if you’d prefer to try it as we did with today’s happy butter accident, try using 6-8 tablespoons, and then do not add clarified butter when serving)
4 large eggs
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup half-and-half

For the topping:
4 oz clarified butter (or, if you’re not into clarifying, simple melted butter will do)
Juice of 1 lemon
Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Divide the 4 Tbs butter between two 6-inch cast-iron skillets, and melt it over low heat.

In a blender, whir together the eggs, flour, and half-and-half.

Pour the batter into the skillets over the melted butter. Slide the skillets into the oven, and bake for 25 minutes.

Remove the puffed pancakes from the oven, transfer them to a plate or shallow bowl, and pour on clarified butter, sprinkle on lemon juice, and dust with powdered sugar. Serve immediately.

Serves two.

Jan 4

2 Comments

A Quilt and Cake

My mother’s birthday was yesterday, and as I had posted previously, I made her a quilt. This is the first quilt I’ve made, and I think it turned out all right, though some good lessons were learned. Lessons like checking the bobbin every so often so you’re not in the middle of a long seam and run out, then having to stop and wind her up again. Or, don’t let the cat and dog be in the same room as a sewing machine, glass of wine and a large quilt. Or perhaps most notably, cut, measure, re-measure, square off, cut, measure again. Sewing is precision oriented, and is something I will practice to (hopefully) perfection. The quilt is the first pattern in Material Obsession, called the Avalon quilt. Simply put, it is twelve 18″ squares of different fabrics, pieced together by the gray pieces, which are of different lengths, but all at 3.5″ width.

Additionally, I made my mother a cake after being so inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s chapter and recipe both titled “Winning Hearts and Minds Cake.” I have to say, this cake really could win over hearts and minds. At least for those who love dense chocolate cakes. And it was easy, with few ingredients and a short baking time. As you’ll see in the picture, I did not have the “best quality” dark chocolate, but I did have Ghirradeli chips (I didn’t bother chopping it up), and though European-style butter was lacking, Land O Lakes suited me just fine. Also, unbleached flour wasn’t in the cupboard, so I used Pillsbury all-purpose.

Winning Hearts and Minds Cake

7 ounces (200 grams) best-quality dark chocolate
7 ounces (200 grams) unsalted European-style butter (the high-butterfat kind, such as Lurpak or Beurre d’Isigny), cut into ½-inch cubes
1 1/3 cup (250 grams) granulated sugar
5 large eggs
1 Tbs unbleached all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and butter an 8-inch round cake pan. Line the base of the pan with parchment, and butter the parchment too.

Finely chop the chocolate (a serrated bread knife does an outstanding job of this) and melt it gently with the butter in a double boiler or in the microwave, stirring regularly to combine.

Add the sugar to the chocolate-butter mixture, stirring well, and set aside to cool for a few moments. Then add the eggs one by one, stirring well after each addition, and then add the flour. The batter should be smooth, dark, and utterly gorgeous.

Pour batter into the buttered cake pan and bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until the center of the cake looks set and the top is shiny and a bit crackly-looking. (I usually set the timer for 20 minutes initially, and then I check the cake every two minutes thereafter until it’s done. At 20 minutes, it’s usually quite jiggly in the center. You’ll know it’s done when it jiggles only slightly, if at all.) Let the cake cool in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes; then carefully turn the cake out of the pan and revert it, so that the crackly side is facing upward. Allow to cool completely. The cake will deflate slightly as it cools. Source: Orangette

Winning Hearts and Minds Cake

Jan 2

A Homemade Life, Book Review

My long weekend at home over the New Year holiday was to cook a lot (will post on that subject soon) and read “A Homemade Life” by Molly Wizenberg, blog-turned-book by way of Orangette. I commented to a friend last week how kid-in-a-candy-store it is now to see the growing section of books with personal accounts of food and cooking, versus the classic cookbook with occasional humor and personal touch throughout it’s pages. A few years ago, books about food were limited to biographies about chefs and food editors, or the Gourmet compilation of food writing naturally derived from its monthly publication. In other words, if you were “in the know” about food, you had everything you needed after purchasing the latest cookbook, devouring Bon Appetit or Gourmet montly, and had a dinner reservation at such-and-such hot new place. Not that there is anything lacking in that, but I love that now, we can pick up a book about Molly Wizenberg’s account of how cooking and her love of food helped her grieve her father’s death and celebrate his memory, or how it connected her to unexpected friends and ultimately, her husband. It’s a true story that is neither biography nor memoir…it’s a story that notes memorable food throughout a memorable period of her life. I found her trustworthy (I love a gal from the midwest who isn’t afraid to be fearless and vulnerable at the same time), with a good heart and great stories behind the recipes she dishes out. For my friends in Seattle, she talks a lot about living there which I know is fun to read when you can identify with the weather, bus schedule, restaurants and such.

Here are a few recipes from the book I will be trying in the short weeks ahead:

Bouchons au Thon: “With a texture somewhere between that of a quiche filling and a freshly made country pâté, they tamed the flat pungency of canned fish with the sweetness of tomato and the rich butterfat of crème fraîche.”

Ingredients:

  • 6 ounces canned (water-packed) chunk-light or solid albacore tuna, drained
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) finely grated or shredded Gruyere cheese
  • 1/3 cup creme fraiche
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped yellow onion
  • Leaves from 2 or 3 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped (about 2 tablespoons)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease 8 wells of a standard-size muffin tin with nonstick cooking oil spray.

Place the tuna in a medium mixing bowl; use a fork to break up pieces any larger than a dime. Add the cheese, creme fraiche, tomato paste, eggs, onion, parsley and salt, stirring to thoroughly combine. (The mixture will be a soft orange-pink color.)

Divide the mixture evenly among the 8 muffin wells. Use water to fill any empty wells halfway full to prevent those wells from scorching. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops and edges of the bouchons are set.

Carefully pour the water out of the muffin wells, then dislodge the bouchons by running a rounded knife around the inside edges of their wells. Let them sit for 2 to 3 minutes, then carefully extract them and transfer to individual plates (2 for each portion).

They will collapse a bit as they cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

As well as:

Scottish Scones, found on Orangette.

Burg’s French Toast, her father’s recipe and said to change your life.

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