Tag: baking

Savoury Oat Cakes

November 11, 2015

BD is of Scottish stock, and oatcakes are a good Scottish biscuit.  Commercial ones contain oils he can’t eat, so out came the recipes and the baking paraphernalia for another kitchen experiment.

Now, true Scottish oatcakes aren’t to everyone’s taste. Made without sugar, they can resemble cardboard, I agree…but we all know (even if we’re not admitting it) that sugar isn’t good for us, so I was determined to make these traditionally, without sugar.  I prefer to save my recommended daily allowance of sugar for my tea and for my four squares of dark chocolate. But add spices  – pepper, chili peppers, rosemary – and they become something special.

I went recipe hunting on the internet, focusing on British sources because, after all, they are a British biscuit. Between two of my favourite cooks, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame, and Nigella Lawson, I found two slightly different recipes, combined them, and here’s the result.  You can play with this recipe a lot, as far as the spices go.

Savoury Oatcakes

1 cup scots oats/porridge oats.  (These are not rolled oats.  They are more finely ground, but not oat flour either – somewhere in between.  I found them at my local bulk food store, but you could make them in a good blender or food processor from rolled oats.)

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/8 – 3/4 c  just-stopped-boiling water (explanation below)

Any or all of these spices: (or others).

1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

1 tsp hot pepper flakes

1 -2 tsp rosemary

Pre-heat the oven to 375 F.  Combine the oats and salt and spices in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the olive oil – and now is the tricky part – the very hot water.  You want just enough to mix the oats into a cohesive but not sticky ball, and you need to do this quickly.  The amount of water you use will vary with the texture of your oats. (I found with commercial Scots oats I needed about 1/3 c or just a bit more. You can always add a few more oats or oat flour if the mix is too wet, so err in that direction).

Roll out your oat mixture between two strips of parchment paper until it is very thin – about 1/8 inch if you can – and cut out rounds with a cookie cutter or a glass.  Place on silicon baking sheets or parchment and bake for 10 minutes; flip them over, and bake for another 10.

Cool them completely before transferring to an air-tight tin.  Personally, I freeze them: since they have almost no moisture in them, they thaw really quickly.  Serve as a base for cheese, or just butter them, or – as I do – top with blueberries and (unsweetened) yogurt for a healthy snack or breakfast. (Reputedly Queen Elizabeth eats them for breakfast, too.) Of course, BD, for whom I made them in the first place, can’t eat any dairy products, so he eats them as is. He may be a braver man than I…then again, he is a Scot.

A Very Special Apple Pie

October 31, 2015

As I’ve mentioned on and off in this blog, my husband BD has a specific and rare food allergy to lauric acid, one of the fatty acids found in a wide range of fats. It significantly limits his (and by extension our) diet. One of things off-limits has been pastry, because it’s generally made with either lard, butter, or ‘vegetable shortening’, which usually contains at least one of the fats that have high levels of lauric acid.

But yesterday I found a pastry pre-mix at a bulk food store that is made with only soybean oil. Soybean oil is on the ‘ok’ list. So I gave it a try. (I’ve tried making pastry with a safe oil before, to less than edible results.) But this one worked! And last night – serendipitously at his 60th birthday dinner – we had apple pie for dessert. Lovely, clove-y, gingery (cinnamon is off-limits), apple and cranberry pie.

BD had apple pie for breakfast, too, this morning. I can’t say I blame him – if I hadn’t had pie for 5 years I would too! Now, we’re not going to start having pie a lot. It’s still not healthy. But for special occasions, yes. And I went back out this morning and bought quite a lot of the pastry mix. It’s in the freezer. Christmas isn’t that far off!

Canadian Thanksgiving

October 10, 2015

There are few things more lovely than an early October morning in Ontario.  The sky is a brilliant blue, the roadside and woodlot maples all shades of fire.  I’m going early to the farmer’s market, because this is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, and the market will be extra-busy.

We’re having Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and his family, my adult niece and nephew home for the weekend from jobs and university, along with the youngest niece, in the last year of high school.  Our contribution to dinner will be the wine, and dessert.  I’m making pear crumble and raspberry cake.  If it’s a nice day – and it’s supposed to be, warm and sunny – we’ll arrive, chat, go out for a walk with Ginger, their labradoodle, come back to the house, open the wine, get in each other’s way in the kitchen, and sooner or later eat turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, salad and squash.  Then we’ll all be too full for dessert, so we’ll talk some more, and have coffee and dessert an hour or so later, after the dishes are done.

The market this morning was indeed busy.  I bought pears, and the vegetables for this week’s meals, and two beeswax tapers for our dining room table.  (It’s dark now when we eat dinner, or nearly so, and we like the smell of beeswax rather than artificial waxes.)  Every stall at the market was heaped with local produce – an overabundance of choice, in deep, jewel-like colours:  the purples of plums and cabbage and beets; the reds of peppers and apples and tomatoes; the oranges and yellows of carrots and pears and golden beets, and all the shades of green of brassicas and lettuces and string beans.

Canadian Thanksgiving has its origin in the Harvest Festival of the Anglican and other churches, and there couldn’t be a better time of year for it.  It’s not the huge holiday of Thanksgiving in the USA.  But it’s still a time for many families to get together, celebrate the harvest, enjoy the autumn weather and each other.

I’ve got the pears ripening in paper bags with an apple in each, and tomorrow I’ll make the crumble and the cake.  Here’s the cake recipe: it’s never failed me.

Raspberry Cake With Lemon Drizzle

1-1/2 cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (125 mL) whole wheat flour

1 tsp (5 mL) each: baking soda, baking powder

1/2 tsp (2 mL) each: table salt,,ground ginger

2 large eggs

3/4 cup (185 mL) sunflower or safflower oil

1-1/2 cups (375 mL) granulated sugar

2 tsp (10 mL) pure vanilla extract

2-1/2 cups (625 mL) fresh raspberries

1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips, if desired

1/2 tsp (2 mL) finely grated lemon zest

Lemon Drizzle (optional):

1 cup (250 mL) icing sugar, sifted

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon, as needed

In large mixing bowl, whisk or stir together all-purpose and whole wheat flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and ginger.

In separate large bowl using wooden spoon or whisk, beat eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla until well blended. Stir in raspberries and zest (and chocolate chips if used). Add to flour mixture. Mix well.

Pour batter into greased bundt pan. Bake in centre of preheated 350F (180C) oven until tester inserted in centre comes out clean, about 50 minutes.

Let cool 15 minutes in pan, then turn out on to wire rack.

If making lemon drizzle, in small bowl stir together sugar, lemon peel and enough lemon juice to make an icing of drizzling consistency.

Drizzle icing over warm or room temperature cake.

Makes about 12 servings.

Hint-of-Chocolate Pancakes: an Improvisation

October 7, 2015

Today BD and I had an appointment in the city forty minutes to the west of us at twelve noon. So we decided to have brunch before we went – pancakes and sausages. A good idea, until I went to the freezer and the pantry this morning.

Problem #1? No small containers of soymilk, which I have to use in place of cow’s milk in the pancakes because of BD’s allergies.

Problem #2: No breakfast sausage. Just spicy turkey dinner sausages.

We live 10 miles from town, so it isn’t just a matter of running out to pick things up. But, ok, it’s brunch, spicy dinner sausages will do. But the pancakes? I had two choices: water, or the chocolate soymilk BD drinks. Chocolate pancakes? Why not!

Actually, they were quite good. Just a hint of chocolate, along with the blueberries I always add and the maple syrup on top. Here’s the recipe, in case you want to try it yourself. (I would add walnuts as well, if BD wasn’t allergic to them too!)

Hint-of-chocolate Blueberry Pancakes (recipe makes 6 pancakes)

¾ cup all-purpose whole wheat flour
¾ tsp baking powder
½ cup blueberries (or any other fruit you like – raspberries would be good!)
1 c or a little less chocolate soymilk or milk
1 egg
2 Tbsp light oil – I use safflower.
Mix together the whole wheat flour and baking powder. In a separate cup, mix the egg, soymilk, and oil. Blend the two together, adding more soymilk if necessary to create a fluid batter. Add the blueberries.

Cook on a hot griddle or lightly oiled frying pan until bubbles show throughout the pancake and the top surface looks slightly shiny and set. Flip and cook for another minute or two.

Serve with your preferred toppings – ours is warm maple syrup!

What improv pancakes have you made?

Crumble, Crisp or Buckle: Fall Fruit Desserts

October 4, 2015

Saturday mornings are for visiting the farmers’ markets, and this time of year the stalls are overflowing with fall fruit: plums, apples, raspberries, grapes, and pears. I wanted to buy some of each!

I had promised dessert for a dinner with friends last night, so I did buy some pears along with my usual apples. Driving home, I reviewed what I could do with them, and settled on one of my favourites, a pear-and-ginger crumble. It’s so simple and tastes wonderful. Here’s the recipe, which uses oil rather than butter because of BD’s allergies; you can use butter, of course, if you want.

Pear-and-ginger Crumble

6 medium pears, peeled, cored, and sliced

1/2 cup dried cranberries

6 pieces candied/crystallized ginger, chopped into small pieces

1/2 c brown sugar

3/4 c oatmeal

3/4 c all-purpose whole wheat flour

1/2 c light oil – I use safflower, but sunflower or corn works too

1 tsp powdered ginger.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the sliced pears over the bottom of a 9″ square pan. Sprinkle the cranberries, chopped ginger, and 1/4 cup of brown sugar over the pears.  Add about 1/4 c water (unless the pears are very ripe) to provide moisture.

Mix the dry ingredients (including the other 1/4 cup of brown suger) with the 1/2 c oil and spread over the fruit.  Bake for 40 minutes.  Serve warm, with ice cream, cream or yogurt if you want.

Now, I call this a crumble; others might call it a crisp.  I also have a recipe for a fruit buckle, which is slightly different.

1/4 c light oil

1/4 c brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 c whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/3 c liquid – milk, buttermilk, or water all work

2 cups chopped fruit

Topping:

1/4 c light oil

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1/3 c whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon, ginger, cloves or a mix

Preheat the oven to 350.  Mix together the first 1/4 c oil, sugar, egg and salt; add 1 c flour, baking soda, and liquid and mix well.  Spread in a 8 or 9 inch greased square pan; cover with the chopped fruit. Mix together the remaining ingredients, spread over the fruit.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. (This recipe is adapted from the Blueberry Buckle recipe in my beloved Harrowsmith Cookbook Volume 1. I don’t know why it’s called a ‘buckle’; the recipe originated in Nova Scotia, so it may be a regional term.)

Both of these are very simple to make and are adaptable to many fruits or combination of fruits. (I also like to think they are healthier than a pie, although I may be fooling myself with that thought!)

What are your favourite fall fruit desserts? Please share your recipes!

Garbage Loaf

August 14, 2015

A week or two ago we had friends over for dinner, a simple post-movie meal of cold chicken and salads, followed by local raspberries, fruit loaf and ice cream.  After everyone had finished, there were a few raspberries left.  “Eat them, BD,” one of our friends said, “otherwise, they’ll just go to waste.”

As I assured her they would most certainly not go to waste, but be eaten the next day, probably as part of my breakfast, I reflected on the amount of food that is thrown away.  According to The Guardian, thirty percent of all food produced in the world is wasted, and in western countries a large portion of that waste is in the home – food we buy, don’t eat, and throw out.

Why?  Well, a very small bit of spoiled food occurs – the tomato sauce that gets shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten, and has grown a lovely blue mold when you do find it, the cracked egg in the dozen. But those are not that common in the western world of refrigeration and freezers.  I think food is thrown out because of a lack of planning; a lack of cooking skills in some cases, and because we don’t value food enough.  We want it to be cheap and easy.  We forget the purpose of food – to transform the light and warmth of the sun, the nutrients of the earth, the molecules of water – into nourishment for our bodies, through the labour of many hands.  When something is that fundamental, that miraculous – and can I say it, as a secular person? – that sacred – how dare we waste it?

We try to be mindful about food, and that means planning.  Once a week or so, we draw up a menu, and from that menu a shopping list.  And then we stick to it.  This takes time, every week, but it’s time well worth it, and not just because it will mean less money spent; it means BD and I talk about what we’re eating, what recipes to try, how long we’ll need to make supper, where to buy the produce. We are, as a result, perhaps more conscious – more mindful – of what food is in the house, and what it’s for.

I shop twice a week for grocery-store perishables like milk and yogurt, in part because our fridge just isn’t that big.  (Which in itself is a good thing, since it does mean that there is less chance that half-jar of tomato sauce will get shoved to the back and forgotten.)  I shop almost daily for fruit and vegetables during the summer, when the farm stands are open and the produce is freshly picked.  But for meats, I shop, roughly,  monthly, or perhaps every six weeks, buy in moderately large quantities, divide into portion sizes, and freeze.  All this significantly reduces the chances that food will be overlooked or wasted.

But don’t think I’m a paragon of planning.  I keep a freezer inventory, and I mean to cross off what is used, but it doesn’t always happen.  And so, yes, every so often I find some chicken in the freezer that’s looking a bit freezer-burned. Sometimes the only zucchini I can get at the farm stand is too big for just the meal I want it for.  Sometimes one of the apples has too many bruises, or BD forgets to eat his raw carrots and they go soft.  So what then? I can’t bring myself to throw out food unless it’s truly gone off.

Freezer-burned chicken, like the carcass when we have a roast chicken, is saved to make soup, a mainstay of colder-weather meals.  (I’ll wait until the colder weather arrives before writing more about that – I can’t get excited about soup recipes in the summer.)    Soft, over-ripe, or just plain excess fruits and vegetables that don’t freeze well, though, go into ‘garbage loaf’, basically an adaptation of a banana loaf recipe with the same amount of just about any vegetable substituted for the banana.  I even mix them – but be sensible about that:  tomato and zucchini work together, as do apples and carrots, but I wouldn’t do strawberries and tomato.  BD will eat almost any baking, but even he’d draw the line at the last one!

So here’s the recipe for ‘Garbage Loaf’ as I make it. (I probably should have called it Leftovers Loaf, but at least in our house, it’s too late now – Garbage Loaf it is.)

Wet ingredients:

1 cup just about any fruit or vegetable, diced, shredded, or cooked and mashed..  If using carrots or parsnips, grate and steam slightly first.

1/4 cup applesauce (to reduce the fat; if you don’t have it, or don’t want to use it, double the amount of oil.)

1/4 cup light oil – I use safflower, but sunflower, corn or soy works too.

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

4 Tbsp fruit juice (not tomato juice)

Dry Ingredients:

1/2 c brown sugar (this suits us; you may like it sweeter.  It also depends on whether or not you add chocolate chips or dried fruit.)

1 and 3/4 cups flour:  I use whole wheat.

1 tsp baking powder, rounded

1 tsp baking soda

Optional Ingredients 

1/2 cup of any of:

nuts

chocolate chips

raisins or other dried fruits

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  If using a glass or metal loaf tin, grease it; a silicon one should not need it.

In a bowl, combine the fruit or vegetable mash, oil, eggs, sugar, vanilla and fruit juice.  Mix with a heavy fork or a hand mixer until well blended.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, and any optional ingredients you are using.

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry, and mix with a heavy fork or a hand mixer on low; do not over-mix.

Spoon into the loaf pan and bake for 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

As I’ve said in an earlier post, BD is a tall and highly-active man, so this loaf doesn’t tend to last long – but it freezes well, and, if by some miracle there is a slice or two left after a couple of days, it also toasts well.

I’ve also added shredded carrots and apple to bread:  it makes a denser, moist bread that won’t keep as long – after the first day we slice it and freeze it, and toast the slices; but it’s good with cheese (for me) or hummus.

And dessert at that dinner that prompted this post?  The fruit loaf was indeed Garbage Loaf, made with over-ripe bananas and a slightly suspect apple, and it complemented the raspberries and ice cream very well.

Baking bread, part two.

August 11, 2015

I debated whether or not to continue writing about baking bread – and decided that I would tell the story about my most recent bread disaster, and, about why it happened.

Picture the kitchen – it’s a galley kitchen, a bit wider than some, and big enough for my husband, BD, and me together if we choreograph it correctly.  It’s the end of the day, and I’m a bit tired; we’re doing some house renovations, I’ve been food shopping and I’ve been biking, and spent a chunk  of the day gardening.

We’re having pizza for dinner (cheeseless, due to BD’s allergies), and I’ve made a double bread recipe and will use part of the dough as the pizza crust, and part for bread.  BD is making oatmeal cookies at one end of a counter – well, he’s using two-thirds of the counter, really – and I’m grilling veggies and chicken for the pizza.  I separate off a third of the dough, add herbs and grilled onions to it, and roll it out.  While it’s rising slightly, I divide the rest of the dough between the two bread pans, and put them on top of the stove, to benefit from the warmth as BD’s cookies bake.

We’re doing all this at the same time so that the oven is on for the shortest period of time possible.  Here in Ontario, where we have time-of-use pricing for electricity, the hours between 5 and 7 pm are mid-peak in the summer – the second most expensive per-unit charge.  We’re sensitive to our electricity use, both for budgeting reasons and for environmental concerns.

BD’s cookies are done, and while the oven changes temperature from the 375 degrees the cookies bake at to the 425 the pizza needs, I throw together a salad while BD cleans up the kitchen.  The pizza only takes 15 minutes.  As I take it out of the oven, I look at the bread – it still needs at least half-an-hour to rise.

“Should I turn the oven down to 350 and leave it, ” I ask BD, “or turn it off completely and then reheat it to 425 in half-an-hour?  Which will use more electricity?”  He considers.

“Turn it off,”  he says.  So I do, and put a timer on to remind me to look at the bread in thirty minutes.

We eat dinner, clean up; the bread still needs a bit more time.  It’s 7:30 p.m., time for Jeopardy!, which we watch every night.  Ten minutes into the show, the buzzer goes off to tell me the bread is ready to go in the oven. With at least half my mind on the show, I go to the kitchen, open the oven – yes, it’s warm – and put the bread in, set the timer for fifty minutes, and go back to Jeopardy!.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  Fifty minutes later, the timer goes off, and I open the oven to find the bread dough has continued to rise, overflowed the pans, and dripped down the sides and through the racks and onto the bottom of the oven.  Because, of course, I didn’t turn the oven back on.

I could make lots of excuses  – I was tired, I was distracted by the quiz show – but the real reason is that I was not being mindful.  The bread did not have my attention.  The human brain really isn’t meant to multitask – for a good discussion of this, see Leo Widrich’s blog here.

I’m not one to beat myself up about this.  I said a few choice words, wiped up the worst of the dough, and baked the bread anyway.  Then I couldn’t get it out of the pans in one piece, so it ended up on the bird feeder, in chunks.  The squirrels were happy.  I made bread again the next day, with my mind on the work.  And when we found ourselves in the same situation a week or so later, we didn’t turn the oven off between cooking dinner and baking the bread.

Baking Bread

August 10, 2015

Several years ago, my husband developed an unusual food allergy: he is allergic to one specific fatty acid.  When he eats anything containing lauric acid (dodecanoic acid, a saturated fatty acid with a 12-carbon atom chain, if you really want to know), he breaks out in severe hives.  This limits what he can eat, and makes buying many commercial products impossible.  We’ve adapted to this, and as a result probably eat a much healthier diet, as it has eliminated red meat, dairy products, and most fats (with the exception of olive, sunflower and safflower oils) from our meals.

He’s a tall, lean, very physically active man, and needs a lot of calories to maintain a healthy body weight.  (I’m jealous, yes.)  As a result, he eats a lot of bread, but it can’t be just any bread, because many or most commercial breads are made with at least one of the fats he can’t eat.  Luckily, however, there is one artisan-bakery bread widely available here which he can eat, and that’s what we’ve bought for many years.  But…it’s at least $4.00 a loaf, sometimes more, depending on what type we buy, and he goes through the best part of a loaf a day.  When I was preparing for retirement, analyzing our grocery budget, looking for places to reduce spending, this one stood out.

I learned to bake bread as a teenager, and I’ve made it on and off for years, but it’s a time commitment, needing at least three hours and usually more from start to finish.  But we’re home all day now.  I did the math:  I can make two loaves of multi-grain bread, made with nothing else but olive oil, water, and a bit of salt, for about a dollar a loaf.  Plus the electricity. So now, every couple of days, I make bread.  And I love it.

The process begins with the yeast dividing in a half-cup of warm water, scenting the kitchen with promise.  While it’s dividing, which takes about ten minutes, I get out the flour – olive oil and salt sit permanently on our kitchen counter – and the large pizza pan I use to knead the dough on. (It’s easier to clean than the counter-top.) After ten minutes I add a glug of olive oil, a grind or two of sea salt, another 2 cups of water, and three cups of flour.  Then I mix it, with a heavy dinner fork.  At this point, it’s a sticky paste.

Half a cup of flour goes on the pizza pan, and another cup or so into the bowl so that I can start to mix the dough with my hands.  (Before this starts, I put music on – a good reggae song from Max Romeo is ideal.) Then I dump it all out onto the pan, and begin kneading.

The dough feels good under my hands: elastic and alive.  It’s my hands that tell me if I need more flour in the mix, from the feel, silky and resilient, but not stiff.  Usually I end up using between five and six cups of flour to reach the perfect consistency.  I knead for five minutes, hard, pushing the heels of my hands deep into the dough.  When I started doing this, my arms and hands would ache afterwards, but now the muscles have grown stronger.  I dance a little to the music.

After five minutes of kneading I give the dough a last shape into a ball and put the pan either on top of the stove (in the summer) or inside it with the light on (in the winter, when the house is a bit colder) to rise, set the timer for an hour, and leave it to double.  If I’ve got the dough just right, an hour is exactly what it needs; if it’s a touch too stiff, it may need a little longer.

I bake the dough in metal bread tins, well-oiled with safflower oil.  Once the dough has doubled, I give it two or three quick kneads, roll and stretch it out into one long loaf, cut it in half, and put the halves into the tins.  Another hour or so to rise, three shallow cuts on each loaf top, and they go into a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes.  The house smells wonderful.

Of all the cooking I do, there is something elementally satisfying about baking bread, taking a few ingredients to make something so good, whether it’s eaten still warm, dipped in olive oil, or toasted to golden brown and dripping with blueberry jam or honey, knowing that you are participating in an activity that goes back through so many generations.  Sometimes I experiment, adding dried apricots and figs for breakfast bread, or herbs and sauteed onions for a savoury loaf. Occasionally, I have a disaster…and perhaps I’ll tell a story or two about that in another post.