eggs whites

The last muffins I made ere good, but flat, so one of my friends suggested using egg whites to make it lighter and fluffier, so I decded to try that. Seemed like a good idea at the time. What wasn’t a good idea was thinking that raspberries would be a good filling.

I thought, at the time, that the reason that it wasn’t listed was because no one had thought of it. The cook book called for Blueberries, Apples, Bananas, Cheese or Cranberries. I figured they could all be interchanged. Silly me.

with rasberries

Mostly I did it because the rasberries were about to go off, and I hated the idea of throwing them out, as they taste so good.

I have had bad luck with them, of late. Twice now, they have fallen over as I drove them home, and spilled all over the floor of my car, which is not a good place for any kind of food.

Mixing it all together

I mixed the stuff together with the raspberries, which were already soft, and sort of melted into the mix. I tried folding in the egg white, but after a while, as often happens when I am folding, it is hard to tell if it is working or not.

finished product

The finished muffins looked about the same as the other ones had, but had a very bland taste. Not sweet, or sour, just bland. I kept thinking that at some point they would start tasting better, so I packed them into a plastic bag to try later, but I pretty much know that this is a failed recipe, when done with raspeberries.

the veggies

The veggies always look so good when I first start cooking with them, before I cut them up. The only problem with this recipe, from the Julia Child Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is that she doens’t always say how much in cups the veggies are, or how many veggies should be used. I suppose it is easier to just say how many pounds, but I don’t have scale, so that doesn’t help me.

cooking the veggies

Like the Indian version, things get cooked seperatly before they are mixed together.

I have skilled tomatoes before, but this recipe called for seeing and juicing them as well. You send up with pulp, which I did. The goal appeared to be as to get as much juice out of the tomato as possible. Not only before it went into the mix, but after it was in the mix. The recipe kept calling for all the juice to be absorbed.

The Indian version was very soupy, while this one seemed drier.

the finished product

Also,unless I missed something, there were no spices added other than salt and pepper.

Perhaps, if I had tried this one first, I would have found the Indian version odd, now I find this one odd.

All the veggies cut up

I don’t always manage to cook all the veggies I get in my basket from my CSA before the next week comes about. This week, I was bound and determined to do so. I looked at what I had, and found a recipe that would work, and spend the day, every time I went into the kitchen, gathering up the supplies, so they would all be there, and ready when it was time to cook.

The recipe, Indian Ratatouille, is from the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics. I was surprised, and delighted that not only did I have all the veggies, but I had almost all the spices. Now, granted, I didn’t have as much of all the ingredients as were called for, but I felt it was close enough.

Here is what was called for:

• 2 cups diced onions
• 2 tablespoons veggie oil
• 2 large garlic cloves (I usually use much more than that)
• 1 fresh chile (I used dried chile)
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger root (I used dried)
• 1 tspn ground cumin
• 1 tspn ground coriander
• 1/2 tspn turmeric
• 1/2 tspn ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tspn ground cardamon
• 1 tspn salt
• pinch of saffron (which I didn’t have at all)
• 1 cup of orange juice ( I used water)
• 5 cups cubed eggplant (I had about 2 cups worth)
• 4 cups cubed zucchini, squash, or pattypan (this I had, all of them)
• 1 1/2 cups bell peppers (I had about a cup)
• 3 cups fresh tomatoes
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

cooking the veggies

As it is with onions, you cook those first, and then add the garlic, chile giner and spices. The eggplant and juice were added last, and then the squash bell peppers, tomatoes and basil.

It was amazing. I served it on rice, I had made earlier. I knew I had to make it again. Not sure how it will turn out with the orange juice, as this was great.  I’m sure the saffron will ad something to it.

And eating it all

This dish has lasted me for a few days now, and it great reheated.

So, now I got curious. What would the more traditional ratatouille taste like. I decided to make the Julia Child version next.

dry ingredients

I made a lot of yogurt the other day, but have not made any more granola, so we haven’t been eating it.  Because of that, I know have a pleathera of yogurt, and not wanting it to go to waste, I began looking for something to make with it. And where better to look, then  The Book of Yogurt.  I had had it for a while, because I thought, when I first go it, that it would teach me how to make yogurt. It does, but only in the beginning. The rest of the book  tells you want to do with the yogurt once it is made.

First thing, was to find something that I had the ingredients for. I chose the yogurt muffins, as they seemed simple enough.

Here is what it called for:

• 2 cups flour (I used rice)
• 1/3 cup sugar (I used raw sugar)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg well beaten
• 2/3 cup yogurt (I ended up using about 2 cups or so)
• 4 tablespoons of melted butter
• Also: one mashed banana, one cup of blueberries, and 3/4 a teaspoon of xanth gum

the mix

The recipe said it would be lumpy, but with my usual problems with using non-wheat flour, I figured I would use extra yogurt, to make it smoother. It was much smoother, and moister, and actually mixed up rather well. I used the blueberries which had started to be a little on the mushy side, and the banana which was in the same state.

out of the oven

The recipe called for putting it in the over for half an hour at 400F. I tried one batch that way, and the second batch at 350F. 400 worked best.

Other than the muffins not rising, as they so often don’t, they were very tasty. I will have to figure out how to make them fluffier.

apple sauce

I have made, what, four apple cakes, and none of them have turned out.

Sigh.

But I still had a bunch of apples, so I pulled out Baby Cakes again, determined that perhaps this one last time, something from their cookbook would turn out the way I expected.

Cartoonist saw the book, and said, no, you are not going to make another apple cake, and you are not going to do it from Baby Cakes.

OK, I said, the continued, getting the apples ready to roast.

But as I read the recipe, I realized that I really just wanted to make apple sauce, and not from that book, but from the Jewish Holiday Treats, which is much easier, and I have done many times before.

• Cut up the apples
• put in water
• put in some sugar
• put in some cinnamon

Sorry to be so vague here, but I always wing it when I make it. I use up about four to six apples, but could be more, depending on their size. Sometimes I throw in pears.

Funny thing, was, when it was done, Cartoonist tried it on the apple cake I had made the other day, and said it worked, that perhaps that was one of the things it was missing.

Cooking the Polenta

I don’t know why I keep trying to make things with polenta, as I must be doing something wrong. It does not get all stiff with me, no matter how much I cook it.

Still, this looked like a cool gluten free lasagna, and I was open to that, as well as having an excuse to use up more tomatoes.

I put the 4 cups of polenta to boil on the stove, and set to getting the tomatoes ready by peal. (even though the recipe called for canned tomatoes.)

This was another recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics.

Preparing the tomatoes

Here is what the recipe called for :

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons dried bail (I used fresh)
• 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/12 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 cup chopped red bell peppers
• 1 cup chopped green bell peppers (I used red, as that was all I had)
• 3 cups crushed tomatoes (I used fresh)
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 tablespoon tomato paste (I didn’t have this)
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt

As usual, all these things had to be done in order. I sauteed the onions, then added the garlic, basil, etc through red peppers. Then added the tomatoes and wine, and set that to cook for about 30 minutes.

And, while all this was cooking, I had to put together1 cup of cream cheese, one egg, and and mix those togehter.

And while all this was going on I was supposed to put the polenta in the fridge, and spread it out., which I did. And, I was supposed to saute the chopped kale (to cups worth), which I did as well. I could have used Cartoonist, but she wasn’t around, so I had to do this all on my own.

finished lasage

When I took the Polenta out of  the fridge, it wasn’t stiff, as described, so I just used it as is, and layered out the lasagna.

First layer was the tomato mix, then the polenta, then the cream cheese, then the polenta, then the tomato mix again, with graded Parmesan cheese on top (which I actually had from a recipe I didn’t end up making.

What is my verdict? Would I make it again? Only if I could get the polenta right. It really needs a stiff polenta, and I think I am not doing it quite right. The book says if it isn’t stiff enough, cook it longer, which I may do next time.

Cutting up the apples

Yes I am still trying to find a way to get through all the apples that we have been getting from our CSA. Come winter, we will miss them, but for now, we just want to use them before they all go bad.

And I am being stubborn. I know there must be a good apple cake recipe out there.

One of the books I got when I was going while at the book shop was Perfect Cakes.  And, I am stubborn, because I keep thinking I can make a good cake without gluten, which I am sure I can.

Cartoonist mixing the mix

I should have known something was wrong when Cartoonist was having trouble stirring the mix. She tried a spoon, and a beater, and finally resorted to using her hands. I took a look and said, perhaps I should add another egg, which I did, and it didn’t’ make any difference, it was still like stirring mud.

Of course, it didn’t help that about half-way through the recipe I realized I wasn’t going to do it the way that the book was suggesting. Oh, I was doing the 3 pounds of apples, but I wasn’t going to grade the cake mixture through a box grater over the apples. Perhaps it woudl have turned out better, but maybe next time.

Instead, I just mixed up the ingredients, and popped it int he over.

• 4 cups of flour (I believe we used a mixture of whatever flours we had left, gluten free of course)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup of raw sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

After mixing it all together we baked it for about an hour at 350F.

The finished cake

The cake didn’t taste bad, it was just very dense. It had a pleasant enough taste, so I think if I were to do this one again, I would either put in more eggs, or more apple sauce, or try xyanth gum, although I haven’t had much luck with that one.

using up apples

It all started when we got more apples in the basket this week. We found a recipe for Apple and Cheddar Souffle in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and thought, great, we’ll make that. Never mind that we had been making all our souffles from the Julia Child cookbook, and they had turned out quite well. Never mind all that. We decided that this was it, and we would use up more apples, and that would be great.

goat milk

We also thought it would be a good time to use Goat Milk, which I had been wanting to do for some time. So here is the recipe. Perhaps it will work for others, but certainly didn’t for us.

• 2 cups of milk (we used goat milk)
• 2 tbs butter
• 6 tbs rice flour
• 6 eggs separated
• 1 cup grated cheddar
• 2 cups grated apples
• a bit of nutmet
• 3/4 tsp salt

It wasn’t like we didn’t follow the direction, because we did.

finished

But, it didnt’ rise, and it didn’t sink when we got it out. And it didn’t taste quite right, even when cooled, so this was one that we just tossed out, when we had finished tasting it.

soup in the blender

Once I got the mix off the pot, I had to blend it again, with the apple sauce I had made the other day.

Problem was that it was quite hot, so I couldn’t just reach my hand in and move things around, not that I didn’t try, and keep discovering how hot the mixture was. It was supposed to be soup like, but it never got much thinner, no matter how much I mixed it in the blender.

Finally, I decided it was as mixed and as blended as it was going to be, so I poured it into a bowl, and stuck it in the fridge for four hours, which is what the recipe called for.

Cartoonist said, what? Four hours? She was hoping to eat it that night, but we couldn’t do that. It was already late, and I didn’t want to stay up any longer.

Finished soup

The next day, when it came time to taste the soup, we finally added the sparkling cider, and we both said it didn’t taste like soup, but rather really reach apple sauce.

I let my book keeper taste it, and she said it tasted really good, and wrote down the recipe, but I explained what we had changed, and said she might find hers would turn out more soup like than ours did, especially if she used apple juice, rather than the apple mush like things we used.

So now, we can use this for apple sauce on the next thing we make.

Mixing the apples to make apple juice

We decided, because of the weather, to make Chilled Apple and Carrot Soup. We had most of the ingredients, and those we didn’t have, that we didn’t get, were just those for the garnish, which we weren’t too worried about.

Two things the recipe called for were apple sauce and apple juice, both of which I figured I could make. Well, I had made the apple sauce the week before, so didn’t have to buy that, and we had made apple juice by accident before, so figured it wouldn’t be to hard to make on purpose.

I found the best way to get it to work in the blender was to first grind it up int he the mini-food processor. That worked ok, but seemed to be an extra step, and I would get frustrated, and try to make it go faster, which it didn’t want to do.

cutting up carrots

Meanwhile, Cartoonist was cutting up the other ingredients.. She cut up the 4 apples, and the 3 large carrots, and the 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest (which was about one lemon) and the juice of the lemon, while I was still grinding up the apples.  Once I had the apple juice sort of ready, we added it all together to simmer.

The sachet in the pot

We had gone to the store to buy clove and stick of cinnamon for the sachet, but hadn’t thought what I would put it in. I had not bought cheese clothe. So I took a napkin, and tied it up in that, and that seemed to work just fine. I have never used a sachet before, but liked how it gave a nice flavor to the mixture, without having to fish it out when it was all done.

Cartoonist kept worrying that the clothe was going to catch fire. I told her it wouldn’t, and it didn’t.

Once everything was cooked, we were thinking it would be all done, but no, there was going to be more to making this soup.

Here is what the recipe was:

• 5 apples, peels and cored and cubed
• 3 large carrots, peeled, and cubed
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest.
• 2 cups of apple juice
• 1/2 cup of apple sauce

The sachet had

• 1 small stick cinnamon
• 1 close
• 1 sprig fresh thyme