COCONUT BANANA MUFFINS

Lately, at my office, we are awash in overripe bananas. The company provides fresh fruit for us throughout the week, but I think someone has been buying too many bananas, because every Friday, there are dozens of speckled brown ones left over, and everyone starts trying to persuade everyone else to take some home, make banana bread over the weekend, and bring it in on Monday morning (there aren’t too many cooks in my department, but a lot of enthusiastic eaters). I’ve never been a huge fan of bananas or banana bread, but I also can’t resist the siren song of free, perfectly good fruit in danger of going to waste. If my freezer wasn’t already insanely full, I’d take every last one of those poor orphaned bananas and save them for a rainy day. As it is, when last Friday rolled around and no one seemed to be stepping up to the banana-bread-making plate, I figured I’d better take a shot at it.

I got it into my head that what I really wanted was coconut banana bread, and I found this recipe at Baking Bites that seemed to fit the bill. Actually, I wanted coconut banana muffins, because I like muffins so much better than loaves of bread—they’re cute, they’re perfectly portioned and portable, and they stay fresh longer. Usually I try to follow a recipe exactly on the first try, particularly when I’m planning to feed it to other people, but I knew that quick-bread recipes usually translate pretty well to making muffins, as long as you decrease the baking time. I took an even bigger risk by deciding I didn’t want to fool with buying a can of coconut milk and then only using a little bit of it. The original blog post mentioned you could use plain milk, but the flavor would be less coconutty. Then I had a brainwave—I have coconut extract in the cupboard, so why not add a little of that to amp the flavor back up?

I’m relieved to say that my experimentation worked perfectly and the muffins were awesome. I made some plain ones, too, from the Baking Bites basic banana bread recipe, because I know there are weirdos who don’t like coconut, and they were certainly good, but the coconut ones were the clear favorite—the container I’d brought was cleaned out by the end of the day. (Luckily, I’d hoarded a few at home in the freezer for A and me.) The flavors were perfect together, and the coconut ensured an extra- tender texture. I will admit the muffins were on the verge of being too sweet for me—if I were to make these regularly (and I’ll hazard a guess that they will indeed replace the tasty-enough-but-slightly-fussy banana-nut muffins as my go-to banana-bread recipe), I would experiment with either reducing the sugar slightly or using unsweetened coconut (although the unsweetened coconut I’ve seen is always dry—would that detract from the moistness of the muffins?). Still, that’s a mild complaint; in all other respects, these are a slam dunk.

2½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed banana (2 medium-large bananas)
½ cup coconut milk (or ½ cup milk and ¼ teaspoon coconut extract)
¼ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease two muffin tins or line them with cupcake wrappers.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and eggs until well combined, then whisk in the mashed banana, coconut milk (or plain milk and coconut extract), butter, and vanilla.

4. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and stir until just combined, making sure no streaks of flour remain. Stir in shredded coconut.

5. Pour batter into muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (or with only a few moist crumbs attached). Remove muffins from tins and cool on wire racks.

Yield: About 16
Time: 45 minutes
Leftover potential: High. Stored in the freezer, these will keep for weeks.

CRASH HOT POTATOES

Courtesy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks, this simple but clever technique combines the tenderness of baked potatoes and the brownness of roasted potatoes with the crispness of fried potatoes. Perhaps because I didn’t have PW’s awesome potato masher (I used a meat tenderizing mallet), perhaps because I didn’t boil my potatoes quite long enough, perhaps because they were too big, or most likely because I wasn’t gentle enough (Hulk smash!), I botched the crashing part of the recipe, shattering my potatoes into a crumbled mess instead of PW’s neat-looking patties, but they still tasted great. I served them with meatloaf and slow-cooked carrots (which always go together on my menus), and it was a perfect new-wave meat-and-potatoes meal. I sense this will become my go-to side-dish potato recipe...once I hone my potato-squishing skillz, anyway.

8-12 smallish red potatoes
Olive oil
Coarse salt
Black pepper
Fresh rosemary (or other fresh herb, such as chives, parsley, thyme, or oregano), chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the potatoes until fork-tender.

3. Generously drizzle olive oil on a baking sheet. Place the cooked potatoes on the baking sheet, leaving plenty of space between them. Using a potato masher, gently press down on each potato until it slightly mashes, then rotate the potato masher 90 degrees and mash again. Brush the top of each crushed potato generously with olive oil. Sprinkle potatoes with salt, pepper, and chopped herbs.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Neutral. I wouldn't make these with the specific intention of having leftovers, but I certainly wouldn't throw the remnants away, either. I had some the next day and while they weren’t icky, the delightful crispiness was gone, leaving them basically tasting like baked potatoes. Which is fine, but far less exciting than CRASH HOT!

BANANA-WALNUT CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES

I’m trying not to post any more recipes without photos, but I dropped the ball on this one. Initially, I was too disappointed with the way the cookies turned out to take loving macro-lens pictures of them; the photo on the Martha Stewart site had led me to expect big, fat, cakey cookies, whereas mine spread thin and browned a lot. Then I tasted one, and from that point on I was too busy eating them to take pictures; between hormonal me, banana-loving A, and a few of our grateful friends, we made short work of them in a matter of days. Despite the less-than-perfect appearance of my cookies (which, until I’ve tried this recipe a few more times, I’ll chalk up to my own inept execution), this is a fabulous recipe that you need to know about immediately, photo or no photo. Postscript, August 2010: I've made this recipe many more times and the result remains rather homely, but reliably delicious; I'm finally adding a photo.

There are so many genius things about this recipe: it combines the flavor and moistness of banana bread with the awesomeness that is the classic chocolate chip cookie, and of course banana and chocolate pair naturally together. The flavor of the banana isn’t pronounced, but the tenderness it adds to the cookie is unmistakable. These aren’t too sweet, and the oatmeal (which I am such a sucker for in baked goods), nuts, wheat flour, and banana lend a wholesome aspect. The coarse salt (don’t substitute table salt!) adds little zings of savoriness. While you can use chocolate chips instead of chopping up a block of chocolate, the irregularly sized chocolate chunks add interest and incorporate the chocolate more fully through the dough.

I’m not even a banana fan and I loved these cookies. (To demonstrate how rarely I buy bananas: the one I used for this recipe was rescued from the depths of my freezer, and when I thought about it, I realized it was left over from when I made banana cake for A’s birthday in April!) A, who adores the banana/chocolate combo, was wild for them and would like to insist that I make them again, right now, please.

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 large)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into ¼-inch chunks
½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (about 2 ounces), toasted

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Whisk together flours, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl; set aside.

3. Place butter and sugars into a large bowl (or the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment) and mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix on low speed until combined. Mix in banana, then gradually add flour mixture and mix until combined. Stir in oats, chocolate chunks, and walnuts by hand.

4. Using a 1½-inch ice cream scoop (or a heaping tablespoon), drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown and just set, 12 to 13 minutes. Let cool on sheets 5 minutes, then transfer cookies to wire racks and let cool completely.

Yield: About 3 dozen
Time: Anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how many cookie sheets you can fit into your oven at once
Leftover potential: High—duh, they’re cookies. Martha notes that the cookies can be stored in airtight containers for up to 2 days; I will add that they will keep for weeks in the freezer and taste just as great straight from the freezer as they do defrosted. At room temperature you get the nice, soft texture, but I found the banana flavor to be more prevalent in the frozen cookie.

YELLOW SQUASH SALAD

First the purple potatoes, then these green beans (which I haven’t posted about yet, but they’re quite good), and now yellow squash—I’m starting to think any vegetable can be elevated to world-rocking deliciousness with just a little shallot and lemon.

On Saturday night, the stars aligned: I had a spare, purposeless yellow squash getting old in my fridge; an elderly shallot in the cupboard; some leftover thyme; this Everyday Food recipe languishing on my Delicious list; and a rainy evening alone—A was at play rehearsal, so there was no one except me to be disappointed if this recipe failed. Reader, it did not fail.

This recipe is one of those gems that manages to be both ridiculously simple and still far more than the sum of its parts. I’m not usually a fan of uncooked squash, but after a few minutes marinating in the acidic dressing, the thin slices of squash were intriguingly transformed, losing their hard rawness while still remaining refreshingly crisp. I had been suspicious the salad would be bland, but the seasonings were perfect, the flavors bright and clean. I soon became extra-glad A wasn’t there, because I had made a half-recipe and I devoured the entire thing myself—ostensibly two servings’ worth. And I wish I had some more right now.

As an added bonus, this might be one of the easiest, quickest recipes I have. No cooking, only one bowl, just a tiny bit of whisking and slicing, five minutes to marinate—you can literally be done in 15 minutes. Magical.

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 large lemon)
3 tablespoons olive oil
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 medium yellow squashes (8 ounces each), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise into half-moons
1 shallot, thinly sliced crosswise
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together lemon juice and oil. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Add squash, shallot, and thyme. Toss to combine. Let stand at least 5 minutes before serving.

Serves: 4 as a side dish
Time: 15 minutes
Leftover potential: Unknown!

STOVETOP BAKED BEANS

I mentioned trying this recipe a while ago, when I was desperate for something warm and savory (and leftover-hotdog-complementary) during the Broken Oven Ordeal. I’ve never before been a big fan of baked beans, but then I’ve spent most of my life not being a fan of beans in general. I’m slowly coming around to this cheap, comforting, protein- and fiber-rich staple—in fact, I just noticed this is the second bean recipe I’ve posted in a row. Whatever prompted my sudden desire for baked beans, I’m happy that I found this recipe at Simply Recipes. It's easy to throw together and tastes, to my constant amazement, just like “real” baked beans (er, that’s the Heinz canned ones I grew up with, I’m afraid), but a hundred times better, with a beautiful sweet-sour-spicy balance. In my mind, this is a DIY triumph on par with taco seasoning, ranch dressing, and pickles.

Unusually for me, I’ve made a number of adjustments to the original recipe—some on purpose, but others by accident. The first time I made this, I absentmindedly confused the directions for using dry beans with the ones for using canned beans, leading me to slow-cook my canned beans with onion and garlic—a step not actually called for in the recipe, as it turned out, but one that yielded such delicious results that I wouldn’t dream of skipping it. If you want a quicker method using the canned beans, or if you’d like to use dry beans instead (I’ll try this sometime—this winter I’m itching to get my hands on a Dutch oven and an assortment of Rancho Gordo beans; if you’re reading this, Mom, there’s a Christmas gift idea!), consult the Simply Recipes version, but here’s the way I do it, where the beans get nicely broken down (I still hate the firm, mealy texture of whole beans), almost soupy, and deeply seasoned. I’ve been craving it repeatedly over the last few months, and although I officially categorize it as a side dish, I’ll admit that our favorite way to eat this is as an entrée, in big bowls with slices of grilled hot dog (Trader Joe’s makes a good, uncured, all-beef frank) stirred in (and, don’t worry, a green salad on the side). Oh, yum.

3 (15-ounce) cans small white beans, such as cannellini or navy, undrained
1 onion, peeled and minced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup ketchup
¼ cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1½ teaspoons dry mustard powder
¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1–2 slices raw thick-cut bacon, chopped

1. Place beans with their can juices in a large pot. Add onion, garlic, and bay leaf, plus water as needed to cover the contents of the pot. Heat to a simmer and let cook over medium heat for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion is tender and some of the liquid has cooked away. Remove the bay leaf and add 1 teaspoon salt.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together the ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar, mustard powder, Tabasco sauce, and pepper. Add mixture to beans, along with bacon, and stir to combine. Bring the beans to a simmer and cook over low heat for 30-40 minutes until thick.

Serves: 4–6
Time: 1½ hours
Leftover potential: High; as with soup, the flavor seems to improve over the next couple of days.

BLACK BEAN AND SALSA SOUP

This may be the easiest recipe in my entire repertoire, and is one of the few minimal-ingredient, pantry-food-based recipes I’ve tried that actually taste good. Could anything be simpler? Black beans are blended with broth to make soup, with salsa ingeniously serving as a stealthy, handy one-stop seasoning agent, assisted by cumin and green onions. It was a staple of my menus when I lived alone—not only because it was so quick and easy and relatively healthy, but also, admittedly, because it gave me an excuse to eat corn chips, or in more indulgent moments, nachos, on the side. I was initially surprised that I hadn’t already posted it here, until I remembered that A doesn’t really like beans and since moving in with him I only make it for myself when he’s out of town. But I really wanted it last week—I had a vision of how good it would be with quesadillas dipped into it—and so I introduced A to it, and he ate it willingly. His verdict was “pretty good,” which spoken by A about a bean soup really means something.

Of course I’m going to tell you that this recipe will be better if you use homemade broth. But back in the days before I became a broth snob, I recall using canned low-sodium broth and it was fine. Naturally, choose a high-quality salsa you really like the flavor/spiciness level of—I, as if you had to ask, use Trader Joe’s Salsa Especial (which isn’t very chunky, so I usually use slightly less broth to keep the soup from getting too thin—maybe 1⅓ cup?). I haven’t experimented with any add-ons, but there are all sorts of things you could mix into this soup or sprinkle on top if you feel like fancying things up—cilantro, jalapeno, shredded cheese, sour cream, red onion, even chicken I suppose. You might also want to add a sprinkling of salt if you’re using low- or no-sodium broth (my homemade stuff is salt-free, and I found that a dash of salt really perked up the finished soup). Corn chips or quesadillas—or, heck, nachos—make a nice accompaniment.

2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1½ cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup chunky salsa
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion

1. In a food processor or blender, combine beans, broth, salsa, and cumin. Blend until fairly smooth.

2. Heat the bean mixture in a medium saucepan over medium heat until thoroughly warm. Ladle soup into bowls and top each serving with ½ teaspoon green onion and 1 tablespoon sour cream (if desired).

Serves: 4
Time: 20 minutes
Leftover potential: As with all soups, high. The flavor seems to improve with a few days in the fridge, and you can easily freeze if you’d like to—though given how quick it is to make and how few fresh ingredients are involved, that doesn’t seem necessary.

ZUCCHINI-POTATO FRITTATA

I’m usually disappointed by egg-based dishes such as frittatas; they seem to turn out either too dry or too watery, and usually bland, the kind of sad, mysterious blandness that seems to persist no matter what other ingredients are involved. Yet I bullheadly keep trying them because they always sound so seductively wholesome and cozy and nourishing, despite all the evidence suggesting that maybe I just don’t really like eggs as much as I think I do. And finally my stubborn deludedness has been rewarded! I grudgingly tried this recipe because it called for six eggs and, due to a little miscommunication with myself (“We need more eggs! I’ll just buy a dozen at the farmers’ market…Oh, wait, it was last week that we needed more eggs, and I already went to Whole Foods and bought a dozen, so now I have…many, many eggs”), I needed to clear some eggs out of my refrigerator, stat. What a fortunate mistake that turned out to be, because this recipe, from Andrea Chesman’s Serving Up the Harvest (which I just put on hold on the library based on the strength of this dish), found via The Kitchn, conjured up the exact frittata I had always dreamed of.

The flavors here are ideal—zucchini and potatoes are a match made in heaven, onions and ham always liven things up, and Cheddar is hands-down my favorite cheese but seems underused in cooking outside of mac-and-cheese-contexts—but I’m convinced the technique is the real magic ingredient here. While the recipe steps might sound fussy, they happen surprisingly quickly and easily and are vital to the success of the finished dish. (In particular, don’t skip salting the zucchini—allowing it to drain much of its liquid before cooking prevents the frittata from getting watery.) How else to explain the exquisite texture of this frittata? Everything was perfectly cooked. The potatoes give it a firm structural integrity (I was astonished at how beautifully it sliced into clean wedges that maintained their shape even after being bounced around in my lunchbag on the way to work), and the underside was pleasingly browned, yet the eggs remained fluffy and creamy—gone the dry crumbliness that has plagued so many of my past frittata attempts!


I wouldn’t change a thing, except to add a pinch more salt, either to the beaten eggs or to the potatoes or to both. Otherwise, the only salt in the recipe is what’s added to the zucchini to drain them, plus of course the salty flavor of the ham. While the reviewer at The Kitchn thought her version was perfectly salted (maybe because she used regular bacon, which tastes saltier than the all-natural ham I used?), I thought mine could have been kicked up a tiny bit more (potatoes just cry out for salt). I sprinkled salt and pepper (and a little fresh basil) over the wedges before serving, but the salt really would have been better integrated inside the frittata. Still, this was just a small flaw, and it became less important as the flavors seemed to deepen and develop in the leftover servings. Oh, the leftovers! The frittata was so large, I cut it into eight slices, and then it turned out to be so filling that I couldn’t eat more than a slice at a time, so suddenly we were faced with six containers full of leftover frittata, which worried me. But the leftovers were fabulous. We had frittata for dinner on Thursday night, lunch on Friday, dinner on Saturday, and lunch again on Sunday, and we never tired of it—in fact, after we polished off the final sliced, A asked, “When are you making this again?” The leftovers were so happy that they inspired me to add some new info at the end of the recipes I post here: A “leftover potential” rating. I used to hate leftovers so much when I was younger, and now I adore them—if I’m going to go through the trouble of cooking, I want it to last me for more than one meal, and if it’s something delicious, I want to eat it more than once. I rely so much on leftovers for cheap, easy, healthy lunches every day at work and no-fuss meals on the weekends, I want to encourage everyone to take advantage of them! Eventually, hopefully, I’ll go back and add that information to all the previously posted recipes. Eventually.

A final note: I didn’t have any serving plate large enough to hold the finished frittata, so I had to use a big plastic cutting board, and my Calphalon oven-proof skillet is so heavy I can barely hold it in one hand, especially while wearing clumsy oven mitts, and A wasn’t home to help me out, so I didn’t feel equipped to try the nifty inversion of the frittata onto the plate described in step 7. Instead, I took a deep breath, gripped the handle of the skillet in both oven-mitted hands, and flipped it over as fast as I could, dumping the frittata out onto the cutting board on the counter. Usually I’m not too coordinated with such things, but it worked just fine! There’s more potential for the frittata to get bent or broken with this technique, but I think if you’ve cooked it sufficiently and are using a nonstick pan that will release it easily, the frittata will be solid enough that you can pull it off nine times out of ten.

1 medium-large zucchini or yellow summer squash, cut in half lengthwise and sliced into half-moons
1 teaspoon coarse salt, plus additional salt to taste
4–5 tablespoons olive oil
1½ pounds red potatoes, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced into half-moons
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
¼ pound smoked Canadian bacon or ham, diced
6 eggs
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

1. Combine the zucchini and 1 teaspoon salt in a colander and toss well. Set aside to drain for 30 minutes.

2. While zucchini is draining, heat 3 tablespoons oil over medium-high heat in a large, well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or ovenproof nonstick skillet. Add the potatoes and onion, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook, flipping and stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high and continue cooking, tossing occasionally, until the potatoes are brown, about 5 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the pan with a slotted spoon, but keep the skillet on the burner.

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

4. Transfer the zucchini to a clean kitchen towel and pat dry. Add the zucchini and ham/bacon to the skillet and sauté over medium-high heat until zucchini is just tender, about 4 minutes. Remove zucchini and ham/bacon with a slotted spoon, but keep the skillet over the heat.

5. Beat the eggs and pepper to taste in a medium bowl until well blended. Fold in the potatoes, zucchini, ham/bacon, and cheese.

6. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons oil to the skillet as needed to lightly coat the bottom. Pour in the egg mixture, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook without stirring until the bottom is set, about 10 minutes.

7. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake until the top is set, 5 to 15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes.

8. Place the serving plate on top of the skillet and carefully invert. The frittata should fall out of the pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

Serves: 6–8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: High. Reheats well, the wedges maintain their shape, and the flavor continues to develop. Great for breakfast as well as lunch or dinner. We made the frittata on Thursday night and continued eating it happily all weekend long.

MRS. FIELDS COOKIES

This recipe, known variously as the Mrs. Fields Cookie Recipe (note: I have never eaten an actual, official, storebought Mrs. Fields cookie), the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe, and the $250 Cookie Recipe, is the subject of much urban legend, which is not really exciting enough to go into here. The point is that these are some damn good cookies, good enough to merit a grandiose backstory. In fact, although I am certainly a fan of the good ol’ plain Nestle Toll House recipe (and will eventually have to try the NewYork Times recipe everyone’s been blogging feverishly about--it's this year's no-knead bread!), these are hands down my go-to chocolate-chip cookies because of two important features: (1) They have oatmeal in them, which I love, but it is ground to a powder and so takes on more of a background role than in your usual oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie; and (2) They have both semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Not being a fan of dark chocolate as a child, I loved it when my mother made Mrs. Fields Cookies. Now I enjoy dark chocolate, but milk chocolate still holds a special place in my heart, and I think the combination of chocolates in these cookies is interesting. Overall, the cookies are not as soft and chewy as I usually prefer (owing to the oatmeal, the dough is so thick you have to mix it by hand), but sturdy, robust, and most importantly, not too sweet—I think it’s thanks to the oatmeal again, which adds a savoriness. I had one of these followed by a normal homemade chocolate-chip cookie given to me by a friend, and the normal cookie (while quite good) seemed so sickly sweet in comparison, my mouth puckered.

Whereas I could eat Mrs. Fields Cookies all day, which is good because when I made these a couple of weekends ago, I clean forgot that the original recipe (as passed down to me by my mother and found all over the Internet as well) makes an insane amount of cookies—about double your average cookie recipe, at least 8 dozen, which meant that the dough barely fit into my largest mixing bowl. Thanks to this little oversight, our cookie supply (stored in the freezer) will last for weeks or even months, but after being unexpectedly chained to the oven for hours baking tray after tray of them, I prudently halved the recipe in my book so I wouldn’t be taken unawares again. Not that too many cookies can ever really be a bad thing...


1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups oatmeal
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons baking soda
6 ounces dark chocolate chips
4 ounces milk chocolate chips
½ cup chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream together butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla.

3. Process oatmeal in a blender until powdered. In a separate bowl, mix powdered oatmeal with flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

4. Mix dry ingredients with creamed ones. Dough will be quite thick; you will have to mix with your hands unless you have a very powerful mixer.

5. Stir in chocolate chips and pecans.

6. Drop heaping tablespoonfuls of dough onto greased cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Yields: about 4 dozen
Time: 1 hour

DILL PICKLES

Cucumbers in their brine, ready to go into the refrigerator and begin the pickling process

A snack-sized portion of the finished pickles, nom nom nom


OMG pickles! I love pickles! Well, I hate the sweet ones. And anything pickled that is not a cucumber. Let me start again…

I love dill pickles! And I am just kicking myself for not figuring out earlier how easy it is to make them in the refrigerator. (Canning them, while not that difficult either, is another story.) Make a brine with vinegar, water, and seasonings, and pour over salted cucumbers? I could have been doing this in kindergarten and eating awesome homemade pickles for an after-school snack every single day. Why did I have to put it off until Labor Day 2008? Ah, so many years wasted eating the store-bought ones….

In short, I have made pickles, and I am pleased with myself. They taste just like actual pickles! (I know, I know, they are actual pickles. But they were so easy to make, it seems like magic.) This very basic recipe, courtesy of Martha Stewart, makes a nice, mild dill pickle slice with a hint of garlic. I am sure it would be awesome on a hamburger or other sandwich of some kind, but so far I’ve just been eating them straight from the bowl whenever I crave a little salty, crunchy snack. Undoubtedly they are better for me than Doritos.

I was a little worried because when I was preparing to make these, I discovered that my big old bottle of white vinegar had expired. In…er, 2005. Turns out I don’t use a lot of white vinegar (balsamic, red wine, white wine, and cider, yes; white, no). The sad thing is that I went ahead and used the vinegar anyway. I know, I’m terrible! You’re never going to want to come over to my house for dinner, are you? Bad enough that at least one cat hair gets into everything I cook, but now I’m using ingredients that expired almost one presidential administration ago. To be fair, I gave the vinegar the sniff test and it smelled like…vinegar. What happens to vinegar when it gets old, anyway? Does it turn into wine? The pickles taste just like they’re supposed to and no one has died, so I suspect vinegar can’t really expire.

Oh, wait! This is what the Internet is for! Let’s check….

(Five minutes later) All right, the Vinegar Institute is on my side:

“The Vinegar Institute conducted studies to find out and confirmed that vinegar’s shelf life is almost indefinite. Because of its acid nature, vinegar is self-preserving and does not need refrigeration. White distilled vinegar will remain virtually unchanged over an extended period of time. And, while some changes can be observed in other types of vinegars, such as color changes or the development of a haze or sediment, this is only an aesthetic change. The product can still be used and enjoyed with confidence.”

I will certainly be using and enjoying the rest of my vinegar with confidence—to make more pickles! If you are a pickle fan, I strongly recommend that you do the same.

2 pounds Kirby cucumbers (small, unwaxed pickling cucumbers)
3 tablespoons coarse salt
3 cups water
2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon dill seed
4 cloves garlic
2 bunches fresh dill, coarsely chopped

1. Cut the cucumbers into ½-inch rounds and place in a colander set over a bowl. Toss cucumbers well with salt and let drain in refrigerator for 1 hour.

2. About 20 minutes before cucumbers are done draining, bring water, vinegar, dill seed, and peeled garlic cloves to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 minutes. Let mixture cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

3. Remove cucumbers from refrigerator; rinse well and drain (discard any juice in the bowl). Pat dry between paper towels or in a dishtowel. Transfer cucumber slices to a large bowl (to save washing, I just dried out the one I’d drained them over and used it again). Add chopped dill to the bowl and toss to combine. Pour in the brine. Let cool completely, about 30 minutes.

4. Transfer mixture to airtight containers (I was able to skip this by making the pickles in a Pyrex bowl with a tight-fitting lid) and refrigerate at least 1 week. Pickles will keep in refrigerator for 3 more weeks.

Yields: 2 quarts
Time: 1 hour 30 minutes (but most of that is draining/cooling time during which you can go away and do something else), plus 1 week for the actual pickling process

BLT SALAD WITH RANCH

I believe my love for BLTs is well known. My weakness for ranch dressing is a darker secret I try to keep in check. So when I saw this recipe in (of all places) Parade magazine, I knew I’d have to give it a try. I’m generally not in favor of entrée salads, but on a hot summer night they sometimes seem like just the thing, especially when they involve (a) arugula, (b) tomatoes, (c) bacon, and (d) bread cubes toasted in bacon fat.

As is noted in the comments on the Parade page, despite the lead-in “Hot August evenings call for light dinners,” this salad is not exactly a dieter’s dream (you can now click over to look at the fat content if you like, but I don’t really recommend it, especially since the fat stats aren't broken down into saturated/unsaturated and thus aren't that helpful). You could probably decrease the bacon quantity, and cook the bread cubes in less bacon fat or switch to olive oil instead (though I wouldn’t encourage that—those bacony croutons were amazing). You could use less ranch, and I think I did—two tablespoons per serving seems like a lot to me, although, granted, I’m not someone who likes my salads drenched in dressing. But how did I choose to make this salad more healthy? Via the dubiously effective yet undoubtedly exciting strategy of eschewing chemical-laden prepared ranch dressing and making my own instead! And I know maybe, speaking strictly statistically, my dressing wasn’t any less fatty than a bottled version—sure, I did use vitamin-rich fresh herbs and substitute nonfat Greek yogurt for the sour cream, but the majority of the dressing is good old mayonnaise—but shh! Leave me my illusions. Because that dressing was awesome. And it made this salad super awesome. And I plan on enjoying them together (with a side of fresh corn on the cob) at least one more time before summer (which, thankfully, in Southern California, lasts through September) is over.

You don’t really need an exact recipe to throw a salad together, so I just used the Parade instructions as a general guide. I split the recipe in half, to make two servings instead of four. I could have decreased everything a little further, since the quantities turned out to be generous, I guess because this is intended as a main dish—2 cups of lettuce, 1 cup of bread cubes, and 1 tomato per person. I could definitely eat that much, but I could not fit it into a bowl. (I prepped the salad in the two individual bowls we were going to eat out of, instead of in one large salad bowl. I suspect that if A were to serve himself out of a larger bowl, he would end up with 80% croutons and bacon.) I had neglected to buy frisee, but the bag of arugula from the farmers’ market was plenty for the two of us. So, just eyeball it. The point is the combination of fresh greens, good tomatoes (I used some gorgeous heirlooms—Cherokee reds, I think), and salty bacon, with the extra flourishes of bacony seasoned croutons (I am always suspicious of dried thyme, but it was great here) and creamy, herby dressing. (Not to neglect the chives—they add a subtle oniony touch.) And, I would like to argue, this salad is likely nutritionally superior to an actual BLT, since you get more lettuce, more tomato, and less bacon than a traditional sandwich contains.

So I recommend this recipe, and if you are going to bother with doing that, I strongly recommend making your own ranch dressing. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, and it will totally rock this salad.

¼ pound bacon (I used 4 slices), diced (1x¼-inch pieces)
1–2 cups cubed French bread (1-inch pieces)
½ teaspoon dried thyme
3–4 cups baby arugula (you can substitute frisee for half of this if you want)
2 ripe tomatoes, cubed (1-inch pieces)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
2–4 tablespoons ranch dressing

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. While oven is heating, cook the bacon in a nonstick skillet over medium heat until it reaches desired crispness. Remove with a slotted spoon and set to drain on a paper towel. Reserve 1 tablespoon bacon fat from the pan.

3. Toss the bread cubes with the reserved bacon fat, plus the dried thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Spread bread cubes in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until crisp and golden, 10–15 minutes, tossing once.

4. Place arugula (and frisee, if using) in a bowl and toss with the bacon, tomatoes, bread cubes, chives, and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with ranch dressing.

Serves: 2
Time: 30 minutes

RANCH DRESSING

God bless the Pioneer Woman. First oatmeal-jam bars, and now this.

I have never been a huge fan of salad dressing. For many years, I would eat my salads entirely “naked” (I still do, on occasion, if the dressing isn’t worthwhile), and now I only use a tiny splash of dressing—not so much for health reasons, but because I can’t stand the slimy texture of lettuce drenched in liquid. When I go out, I always order dressing (usually vinaigrette) on the side, so I can control the quantity, and when I’m home, I use only the simplest of dressings—lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper shaken up in a jar. But the first dressing I learned to tolerate, then crave, was ranch. It perked up, or at least masked, the sad lettuce-and-shredded-carrot-and-red-cabbage salad bar mix that sustained me at the college cafeteria, and as far as I’m concerned it makes a better dip for French fries than ketchup (ah, I mourn for those halcyon faster-metabolism days of my youth, devouring fries with ranch every Monday night at the Groveland Tap in St. Paul, washing them down with a pint of Leinenkugel's!). The advent of Cool Ranch Doritos is a fond food memory for me, right up there with the introduction of the Dairy Queen Blizzard (1985, I remember it well).

Now, ranch and I have grown apart. Happily, I’ve mostly lost my taste for Doritos and am no longer subjected to sad salads on a regular basis (though sadly, I’ve moved away from both the Tap and the land of Dairy Queens). I’ll still dip a few baby carrots into ranch dip at a party, but it would never have occurred to me to try making my own ranch if it hadn’t been for a recipe I recently spotted and instantly craved: BLT Salad With Ranch. Then I remembered seeing a recipe for homemade ranch on The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and the rest was history. Delicious, delicious history.

If you have a bottle of Kraft ranch dressing in your refrigerator or those Hidden Valley ranch-mix packets in your cupboard, throw them out and make this instead. If you think prefab dressing tastes like chemicals, make this and rediscover the joy of ranch. This recipe is dead easy to make and actually tastes just like other ranch-flavored things you’ve eaten, but better. I’m as shocked as you are to learn that the mysterious “ranch flavor” is actually something than can be created using real ingredients, but there it is.

I made a few modifications to the original recipe: (1) I halved the quantities, because a household of two people does not need, and probably should not have access to, a big bowl of ranch dressing. (2) I substituted nonfat Greek yogurt for the sour cream. Certain boyfriends I could mention were skeptical of this decision, but I guarantee it, they were not able to taste a difference and neither will you. Not only is yogurt healthier, but it's also available in small single-serving containers, so you won’t be stuck with a big tub of sour cream. (3) I never have buttermilk around and hate buying a big carton for just a couple of tablespoons, so I always use the ol' milk-n-lemon juice trick. Verdicts vary on the quantities, but for this dressing I just put ¼ cup milk in a Pyrex 1-cup measuring cup, then added about a teaspoon of fresh-squeezed lemon juice and let it sit for a few minutes before adding it gradually to the bowl of ranch until the dressing was thinned to the right consistency).

Oh, and I added some black pepper, because I love it, and some fresh dill, which I happened to have a ton of, because I was also making…homemade pickles! Stay tuned to hear about that exciting adventure later this week!

In the meantime, if ranch dressing holds any dear place in your heart, for pete’s sake go out and make this recipe at once. You owe it to yourself. And if you’re really hardcore, you’ll make your own mayonnaise to go in it! (OK, I haven’t tried to leap that culinary hurdle yet, but it’s on my to-do list.)

1 small garlic clove
½ cup real mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip)
¼ cup nonfat Greek yogurt (such as Fage)
2 tablespoons minced fresh Italian parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
Fresh dill, if desired
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Buttermilk (or milk + lemon juice) to taste

1. Mince the garlic. Sprinkle a pinch of coarse salt over it and mash it into a paste with a fork or the flat side of the knife.

2. Add the garlic to a small bowl along with the mayonnaise, yogurt, and seasonings. Mix well and add buttermilk or milk as needed to thin to desired consistency (about ¼ cup seemed to work for me). Chill for a while, preferably a couple of hours, before serving. Keeps in the refrigerator, covered, for about a week.

Yields: About ¾ cup
Time: 10 minutes

DELICIOUS ST. PAUL

Bear with me. Thanks to all the traveling I’ve been doing this summer (Pacific Northwest and Indiana in July; Minnesota in August), I haven’t been doing much blogworthy cooking lately. Until I manage to get my act together, here are some photos from my recent visit to the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.

After a few years away from my hometown, what struck me was how the produce was portioned so neatly into individual containers. At the California farmers’ markets I’ve frequented, the fashion tends more towards enormous crates or casual heaps from which you fill a plastic bag with your desired amount, then hand it to the seller to be weighed. While this system is much more practical for me (I can control how much I buy, making it easier to match the exact quantities called for by a recipe), it certainly isn’t as aesthetically pleasing (at least to obsessive-compulsives like me!) as all those perfect rows of little boxes and baskets.

Yet I was equally pleased, in a different way, by this heap of garlic. Er, “garlics.” I bought one as a souvenir.

These flowers were extra-pretty when awash in the early-morning sunlight. Thanks, parents, for forcing me to get up so ungodly early!

Yes, please! Man, I love those little yellow guys right there.

Beep!

Wee baby squash, so cute.

Two vegetables I have never tasted.

Cleverly preassembled salsa ingredients. I love the spiciness scale.

Harbinger of fall.

I could eat all of those tomatoes right now. Hmm, perhaps it’s time to take my lunch break.

Afterwards, we had breakfast at my parents’ neighborhood café, Bon Vie, where they know how to serve proper pots of tea (we were all drinking my favorite everyday tea, Tea Source Emperor’s Blend, on this particular morning):


My appetite whetted by all that gorgeous farmers’ market produce, I had this delicious and unique vegetable hash (potatoes, red pepper, celery, zucchini, and yellow squash) topped with a poached egg. And poached eggs are so darn photogenic!


Yep, definitely time for lunch. I just fought the impulse to lick my screen.

PANCETTA-WRAPPED CHICKEN BREASTS WITH LEEKS AND THYME

I’ve long admired Jamie Oliver from a cuteness standpoint, but this is the first of his recipes I’ve actually made. I must say, I’m impressed, even though I’ve tried this twice and not yet managed to execute it perfectly. Don’t worry—the fault is not with the recipe, which is of the simple mix-things-together-and-throw-in-dish-then-bake variety—but with my supply chain. Namely, the pancetta. I think of it as a fairly common ingredient, but neither my beloved Trader Joe’s nor my usual big corporate grocery store carry it sliced, only cubed. So the first time I attempted this recipe, I went to a new Italian market near my house (which I’d been looking for an excuse to visit, but it turned out to be lamer than I’d imagined—mostly an overpriced sandwich shop with a half-assed selection of imported groceries), walked up to the meat counter, asked for a half-pound of pancetta, and watched as the guy cut it off the big marbled chunk in the glass case and wrapped it in paper for me. But I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, because it wasn’t until I got home that I realized the pancetta wasn’t sliced. (Not really the Italian market’s fault, but I still don’t think I’ll be going back there again.) I had to slice it myself, which resulted in thick, rather stubby strips I sort of had to lay awkwardly across the top of the chicken breasts instead of wrapping them around. It worked OK, but it wasn’t the thin, crisp, elegant layer of meat I’d imagined.

I wondered if one might substitute good-quality bacon, and so I tried that the second time I made this recipe (documented in the photo shown above). Bacon did indeed work much better for wrapping, but surprisingly, I didn’t notice the same depth of flavor in the finished dish. Also, the bacon released a lot more fat than the pancetta, so that my leeks were basically swimming in grease by the end of the cooking time and had to be lifted out with a slotted spoon.

Obviously the answer is to embark on a thorough search for proper sliced pancetta (I’m hoping Whole Foods might be the solution to this conundrum) and try this a third time, but I wanted to share the recipe with you now because regardless of all my ingredient problems, I can still tell that it’s a great recipe. This is the kind of dish that takes barely any effort to make and yet produces food delicious and sophisticated enough to serve at a dinner party and spend all night basking in the compliments. The pancetta and thyme do much to spruce up boring chicken breasts, but it’s the leeks that are the superstars here, cooked until they’re meltingly tender and sweet, with winey and porky undertones. Served with a refreshing green salad, it’s an easy yet impressive meal—quick enough for a weeknight, yet worthy of a special occasion.

The original recipe served just one person and was written in Jamie’s casual, almost careless style—few precise measurements, just a knob of this and a pour of that. So everything is pretty much to taste, but in increasing it to serve four, I’ve tried to quantify things as best I can. The one thing that befuddled me about the original was that it called for 6 or 7 pancetta slices for just a single chicken breast (and you’ll notice that in the accompanying photo, that chicken is pretty well blanketed). This seemed excessive, especially when multiplied by four, unless those slices are super-short or something? With the bacon, I found that two slices wrapped around each breast covered it adequately, and for my own serving (shown above) I only used one—both for health reasons and because I like the spirally look of the single slice with peeks of chicken showing through. So I’m leaving the pancetta quantity totally to your whim, along with the oil (you don’t need much) and the wine. Experiment—I think no matter what, you’ll be impressed with the result.

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (if the breasts are large, as they all seem to be nowadays, I like to use just 2 and slice them in half to make 4)
4 large leeks
about 12 sprigs fresh thyme
olive oil
1 tablespoon butter, cut into pieces
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
white wine
enough sliced pancetta (or good-quality bacon) to wrap around the chicken breasts

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Place chicken breasts in a bowl. Wash and trim the leeks, remove outer leaves, and cut white and light green parts into ¼-inch-thick slices. Add leeks to the bowl along with leaves from about 6 thyme sprigs, a splash of olive oil, the butter, salt and pepper, and a swig of white wine. Toss everything together.

3. Remove the chicken breasts from the bowl. Pour the leek mixture into a baking dish just large enough to hold the chicken snugly (an 8- or 9-inch square glass dish works well). Wrap each chicken breast in a single layer of pancetta and place in the dish. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and scatter remaining thyme sprigs atop and around the chicken.

4. Bake in the center of the oven for 25 to 35 minutes.

Serves: 4
Time: 45 minutes

DELICIOUS PORTLAND

Over the July 4th weekend I paid my first-ever visit to the Pacific Northwest, spending most of the time in Portland, which is revered as a foodie mecca for its bountiful fresh produce and local microbrews. I hoped to eat and drink as many tasty things as I could, documenting all of the tastiness with photos of every meal. In this I was only marginally successful. First of all, I was only there for three full days, and I would have needed about a month (or possibly a second stomach) to make my way through my wanna-eat list, so I regretfully shelved some of my food dreams (seafood, brewery tour, Tillamook ice cream, Pix, The Tin Shed, Roots Brewery) for another time. Secondly, travel eating always involves compromise for the sake of expediency—you’re hungry or someone else in your group is, you don’t know the lay of the land, and you just need to eat what’s readily available at the moment so you can get on with your sightseeing. Even I’m not about to spend an entire vacation in the pursuit of restaurants, not when there’s Powell’s and The Grotto to see. And the photo thing fell by the wayside on the second day. Restaurants were dark, or I was too eager to eat, or the food wasn’t that exciting, or I would have felt weird whipping out my camera. I can, however, present you with this excellent portrait of my first morning’s breakfast (I must say, our breakfasts were uniformly excellent on this trip, but this one was my very favorite), an open-faced bacon-tomato-avocado-poached-egg sandwich at Café Marron in Spokane:


Here are three more delicious Portland moments:

1. Circumstances conspired to allow us to dine in the home of a real Portlander, a sort of friend-of-a-friend (well, actually, a father-of-a-friend-of-a-brother) none of us had met before. I knew it was a good sign when we arrived at his lovely house and were immediately drafted to pick raspberries for the dessert. Sitting in the backyard, we drank wine (a good Syrah we’d picked up, at the Maryhill Winery on our way into town) and chatted while dining on a delicious homemade chard-rice casserole and salad featuring vegetables from the garden, followed by an amazing chocolate tart (like this one, from Jamie Oliver’s book Cook With Jamie) garnished with the fresh-picked raspberries. It was our first night in Portland, and it was perfect.

2. In Portland I became determined to finally try this year’s (or last year's?) food-blogger-darling dessert, the French macaron (not to be confused with a coconut macaroon, this is a ground-almond-based sandwich cookie that looks rather like a tiny hamburger, with two rounded layers enclosing a creamy filling, available in a wide array of colors and flavors, making it as photogenic as it is delicious). Of course these are probably widely available in L.A., but in my normal, sensible, well-balanced life I try to avoid bakeries, and traveling is always such a good opportunity to (a) try something new and (b) indulge. Though we weren’t able to make it to Pix, where my source assured me that the salted-caramel macaron was so good “you almost need to eat it in private,”* two varieties of macaron, chocolate and mango, were available at Ken’s Artisan Bakery, just a couple of blocks from our hostel. On a restless late-afternoon walk while my travel companions were resting, I decided to go for it. I had chocolate, of course, and it was delicious—lightly crisp on the outside, tender within:



3. On the final night of our trip, we decided to splurge at Higgins, a highly recommended restaurant in downtown Portland that emphasizes local, organic, seasonal, sustainable food. And wow, it was a great dining experience from beginning to end—excellent food in a relaxed, unpretentious-but-still-fancy atmosphere. K and I both had good regional wines (I don’t remember what mine was called, but hers was “Jezebel”). S had a roasted-beet salad and a cold vegan soup made from pureed potatoes and almonds, seasoned with smoked paprika (it sounds odd, but was quite good). K had a beautiful piece of salmon with vegetables and homemade spaetzle. I had a fabulous sweet-pea risotto featuring three forms of peas—peas, pea pods, and a pea puree swirled in. The sweetness of the peas was perfectly balanced by rated Grana Padano cheese, smoky little chunks of coppacola, and salty wafers of fried Parmesan. I don’t even particularly love peas or risotto, but I loved this. It was the kind of restaurant where you sensed that anything you ordered was going to be delicious, even if it was something you didn’t normally like. This caused us agonies of decision-making over the alluring dessert menu, but at last we settled on house-made rhubarb sorbet and hazelnut ice cream, both served with an assortment of tiny house-made cookies and an amusing cube of Cognac gelee (think freestanding, upscale Jell-O shot). But the show was stolen by the third dessert, and utterly amazing raspberry-ricotta tart with a lavender shortbread crust (I’d been skeptical, fearing it would taste like potpourri or something, but was pleased to be proven wrong—thanks for sticking to your guns on that one, K!). In short, I will definitely be returning to Portland, and Higgins will be on the itinerary.

*This turn of phrase led us to fantasize about opening a restaurant featuring a dessert so supposedly decadent and delicious that when you ordered it, you would simply be brought a plate with a silver key on it. You would get up and go to the back of the restaurant, where your key would open one of several little phone-booth-sized red-velvet-padded rooms, inside which your dessert would be waiting on a silver platter, for you to eat in private, able to groan and gorge to your heart's content, away from strangers' eyes. The dessert wouldn't really even have to be that special; it would all be in the fun presentation. If anyone executes this idea, I demand a lifetime of free desserts!

CORN, ARUGULA, AND BACON SALAD

Courtesy of Simply Recipes, this is a simple salad that vaguely reminds me of my favorite summer meal, BLTs and corn on the cob. (Hmm, I bet BLTs made with arugula [BATs?] would be really good.) The sweet corn, salty bacon, and peppery greens, and slightly sour vinaigrette all balance each other perfectly. (I especially loved that the imparted another dimension of flavor, but was barely noticeable; I don’t enjoy strong vinegar flavors.) I’d never heard of boiling corn in the husk before, and I tried it with one eyebrow skeptically raised, but now I’m a convert—I really could taste the difference in flavor, and as a bonus the corn was much easier to shuck.

I served this salad with quesadillas for an easy Sunday night supper, the perfect end to a brutally hot weekend. (This is my new, amazingly delicious technique for making quesadillas—I used to just toast them in the oven, but when my oven broke last month, I tried this and was blown away—they are so crisp and tasty, perhaps even better than grilled cheese sandwiches!) While the salad is best immediately after you add the dressing, I ate the leftover servings a few days later and although the arugula was wilted, everything still tasted dandy.

4 large ears of corn
2 cups chopped arugula
4 strips bacon, diced and cooked
⅓ cup sliced green onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
⅛ teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cook the corn by grilling, steaming, or boiling the ears (cook them in their husks for more flavor). Let cool, remove the husks and silk, and cut the kernels off the cobs.

2. In a large bowl, mix together corn, arugula, bacon, and green onions. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, cumin, and salt and pepper. Pour dressing onto salad just before serving and toss well.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

BLUEBERRY CRISP

My friend J and I drove up to Somis and picked blueberries on Sunday! Blueberries always seem at a premium here in SoCal, even when they’re in season, so I was excited that in exchange for just a little driving and manual labor, I could get such a bargain—I picked 2½ pounds for just $8. The picking went slowly at first because blueberries are so small and hard to spot on the bushes (at least when they’ve been regularly picked over by other paying customers), but once I got the hang of it, my hunter-gatherer/obsessive-compulsive skills kicked in. Even though the day was brutally hot and sunny, the work was fun, sort of like a treasure hunt where the big “Eureka!” moment happened over and over every few seconds. It felt more pleasant than past U-pick experiences I’ve had with other fruits: blueberry bushes are relatively tall, so you don’t have to backbreakingly hunch over them as you do with strawberry plants, but they aren’t prickly like raspberry plants; moreover, blueberries stay firmer than other berries and don’t make your hands all sticky.

A loves blueberries in any form with a fiery passion; I enjoy eating them raw, but don’t particularly care for them in baked goods (muffins, pancakes, etc.), where they seem to gain just a bit too much intensity. So we both agreed the majority of my haul should just get rinsed and put in a big bowl in the fridge for noshing throughout the week (I’ve been eating them every morning on my plain yogurt; so good!). I did freeze just a few of them, so we could enjoy them later (to freeze blueberries: without rinsing them, lay them on a single layer on a baking sheet and place it flat in the freezer until the berries are hard, then pour them into a container or plastic freezer bag—this keeps them from clumping together; when you want to use them, just defrost and rinse). But I did feel like celebrating my blueberry coup with something special, so I whipped up a mini blueberry crisp. I just used the apple crisp recipe I’ve already posted, adapted it following the cookbook's directions for using blueberries instead (basically, you just add more flour to keep the filling thick), and halved the recipe so it wouldn't use too many of my precious berries.

The result? Yum, of course. Some of my blueberries were on the small, tart side (I like ’em that way), so they responded well to being baked with sugar. I did think the end product had an overwhelmingly intense-blueberry quality I wouldn’t want to eat all day long—I would have preferred it balanced with some vanilla ice cream, or a slightly higher topping-to-filling ratio. But wow, there’s nothing like eating a spoonful of warm, gooey, sweet baked fruit and thinking, “I just picked these this morning!”


This is the full recipe, which I halved (luckily, I inherited a cute little 1-quart baking dish from some unknown source at some point):

5 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
4 tablespoons granulated white sugar
½ cup regular rolled oats
½ cup packed brown sugar
7 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
¼ cup chopped nuts or coconut (I used blanched almonds because that’s what I had on hand)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Place blueberries in a 2-quart square baking dish. Stir in the white sugar and 3 tablespoons flour.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the oats, brown sugar, flour, and spice. Add butter and mix with two knives, a pastry blender, or your fingers until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in nuts or coconut. Sprinkle mixture over blueberries.

4. Bake for 30–35 minutes or until topping is golden. Serve with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Serves: 6
Time: 40 minutes

OATMEAL-JAM BARS

I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I like making jam a lot more than I like eating it. (Whereas usually eating the food I make is my favorite part!)

Don’t get me wrong: jam is tasty! But it’s really hard for me to get through more than one jar per year. I don’t eat a lot of toast (even though I adore it; it just doesn’t fill me up for breakfast), and I don’t have a high tolerance for sweet things in the morning anyway. I’ve experimented with eating jam in other ways—for instance, it’s an excellent way to perk up plain yogurt or oatmeal—yet still I’ve got a backlog of perfectly good homemade fruit preserves getting old in my pantry and refrigerator. The main problem is that last winter when I canned a batch of apple butter to give to friends and family for Christmas, at least half a dozen of the jars didn’t seal (I think some of the lids were too old), which meant they weren’t shelf-stable, so I couldn’t mail them or pack them in my suitcase to bring to Minnesota and give away. They were perfectly fine (in fact, the apple butter is darn delicious, if I do say so myself), but they had to be kept in the fridge—and most of them are still there, lurking in the back, six months later. Apple butter is great on toast, but it’s kind of weird stirred into yogurt (there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of commercially made apple yogurt), and now that it’s full summer (100 degrees in Pasadena today!) a bowl of steaming apple-butter oatmeal just doesn’t appeal.

So I was on a mission to find a recipe that would provide a worthy end to my apple butter and any other old jam I might have lying around now or in the future. Because I don’t really want to stop canning jam! It makes me feel all cozy and Little-House-on-the-Prairie-like. But I know that Ma Ingalls would not approve of me wasting perfectly good fresh fruit by canning it, letting it sit on my shelves for a year, and then reluctantly throwing it out for fear of botulism. Appropriately enough, it was The Pioneer Woman who came to my aid with this insanely easy, delicious, versatile recipe for oatmeal-jam bars. Did someone say oatmeal? I love oatmeal!

Don’t mistake these for health food, because they’re totally not; they’re buttery and they’re sweet—in fact, the first time I tasted them they seemed too sweet, and I thought, “Oh, I won’t want to eat very many of these,” and promptly gave a bunch of them away to my coworkers. Then, later in the week, after dinner, I was hankering for a little dessert and I ate a bar and OMG SO GOOD. The flavor was strongly reminiscent of a non-chemical-laden apple NutriGrain bar crossed with an apple crisp or cobbler or crumble; the texture was addictively soft and chewy and slightly sticky. I will definitely be making these again, because I’ve got two more jars of apple butter left in the fridge and maybe even some older jam stashed away in the cupboard. That’s the best thing about this recipe—you can use just about any flavor you want. PW used apricot in the original, I’ve already testified that apple was awesome, and I am just dying to try a berry-flavored version. Folks, I would even—gasp!—buy jam at the store to make this recipe. And if that’s not a glowing recommendation, I don’t know what is.

Oh yeah, and did I mention it’s really, really easy to make? If you don’t believe me, click over to PW’s original writeup, which walks you through step with step-by-step photos.

1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1½ cups oats
1 cup packed brown sugar
1¾ sticks butter, room temperature, cut into pieces
1 10-to-12-ounce jar of fruit jam or preserves, any flavor

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Using an electric mixer, combine all ingredients except jam in a large bowl until completely blended (it should have about the consistency of crumbly cookie dough).

3. Press half of the mixture into a buttered 8- or 9-inch square baking pan. Spread jam evenly over crust. Sprinkle second half of mixture over the top and pat lightly.

4. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until light brown. Let cool completely (this may take several hours), then cut into squares.

Yield: Maybe 24 bars? (I cut mine super-small, about half the size of PW’s)
Time: 1 hour

FORK-CRUSHED PURPLE POTATOES

I mentioned this recipe a few posts ago, but it needed another go-round to work out the kinks. Attempt #2 happened on Sunday night, as part of a tongue-in-cheek purple-and-gold meal (“gold” being represented by corn fritters) I created to sustain us while we vainly cheered for the Lakers during the NBA Finals. (Boo, Lakers. But yay, I guess, for my dear former Timberwolf Kevin Garnett, who was hilariously gobsmacked upon winning last night—crying, babbling, giving shouts out to “ ’Sota” [I’m so going to start calling it that], using the f-word so many times that vast portions of his speech were bleeped out, and possibly hitting on his female interviewer.)

This time, I deviated from the original recipe by briefly sautéing the shallots in olive oil instead of leaving them raw, and for me that was the one adjustment needed to push this over the edge into side-dish perfection. At least for potato-salad-phobes like me, this is the ideal summer potato dish: It’s got the comforting texture of rustically chunky mashed potatoes, but with a light, lemony flavor and cheerful, festive color. It’s easy to make and doesn’t need to be eaten piping-hot. And watching the color “bloom” as you add the lemon juice is just endlessly fun.

(One note: Your color results will vary depending on the type of potato—I didn’t use the Purple Majesties the recipe specified, just whatever anonymous purple variety the farmers’ market happened to have, and you’ll notice mine are a delicate shade of lavender instead of the brilliant plum hue of the Smitten Kitchen’s.)

1 pound small purple potatoes, washed
4 small shallots, minced
2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 tablespoons good extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped

1. In a large pot, cook potatoes with skins on in heavily salted boiling water until tender, approximately 15 minutes.

2. Remove potatoes from pot, and let them sit until cool enough to touch.

3. Meanwhile, put the empty pot back on the stove (dry it out first if necessary), add the olive oil, and warm it over medium heat. Add the minced shallots and cook until tender, about 5 minutes.

4. While the shallots are cooking, peel the warm potatoes with your fingers. Place them in a large bowl and, using a fork, gently smash them, maintaining a fairly chunky consistency. Pour in the shallot and olive oil from the pot, then add lemon juice, salt, and pepper and fold gently to combine. Sprinkle parsley on top.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

MONSTER COOKIES

Hands down, these are my new favorite cookies.

One funny detail I didn’t mention about the Broken Oven Fiasco is that during the insane four-week wait for the electrician, our building manager (totally blameless and a really nice guy who once got pranked by David Letterman while they were both students at Ball State) placated me by giving me permission to use the oven in the apartment next door, which currently happens to be vacant. This was a stroke of luck that got me through some rough patches—the night we discovered our oven was broken while we were in the middle of making pizza, the special birthday dinner and cupcakes I made for my mother, and the day I decided I Absolutely Deserved Some Cookies, Damn It, Brokedown Oven or No.

Cooking next door was one part fun adventure and one part annoying sitcom trope. On the plus side, it was useful, of course, as well as gratifying my curiosity about the neighboring apartment (turns out it’s designed completely differently than ours, except, eerily, for the kitchen, which is laid out identically). On the minus side, every baking operation involved carrying heavy and often skin-searingly hot dishes of food out through our sliding screen door, across our patio, out our front door, down an outdoor sidewalk, through the front door of the next-door apartment, across its patio, through its sliding screen door, across pristine wood floors I had to avoid tracking dirt onto, and then all the way back again multiple times. On one occasion, I did all this in the rain. On other occasions, I suffered the embarrassment of running into mystified neighbors outdoors while wearing oven mitts and carrying casserole dishes. And on the day I made these cookies, I burst into the next-door apartment to retrieve my final tray of treats from the oven only to discover that a couple of prospective tenants were looking at the place. After awkwardly explaining what I was doing there, I joked that the apartment manager paid me to ensure that the vacant apartments always smelled enticingly like fresh baked goods. I tactfully didn’t mention to them that I’d found the brand-new oven in that apartment to be woefully inferior to my old Thermador next door. I also didn’t offer them any cookies. I’d already tasted one and deemed them too good to share.

I picked this recipe (from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, which I really need to check out, via Bake or Break) mainly because I’m a sucker for oatmeal and I had some M&Ms to use up. (On Valentine’s Day 2007, A filled my gumball machine with white, pink, and red M&Ms, and yes, it had really taken us that long to eat them all. After a year, they had taken on an oddly hard, crumbly texture. I knew that baking them into cookies would disguise their staleness.) I do love M&Ms in cookies, but the real stars here are (a) the peanut-butter flavor and (b) the butterscotch chips. I adore butterscotch, but somehow I forget how much I love it until I actually taste it. I’d never baked with butterscotch chips before, and when I opened the bag of Nestle butterscotch morsels (obscenely priced at over $4 at my neighborhood grocery store) and tasted one, I was dismayed to find that they tasted like sickeningly sweet chemicals. But mixed into cookies, blending with the soft oatmeal-peanut-butter dough and contrasting with the chunks of chocolate, they are awesome. Not too photogenic, mind you—definitely lumpy and “homestyle”—but chewy, luxurious, with a variety of flavors that all work well together.

These cookies were really easy to make (at least for normal people who don’t have to run back and forth between two different apartments). The recipe only uses one bowl, always a plus. The dough seems strange (it barely has any flour in it!) but comes together with little difficulty—a bit on the loose and crumbly side, so that the occasional chip or M&M would fall out when I formed them, but I just gave the dough lumps a squeeze and pressed the stray bits onto the top. The original recipe is for enormous ¼-cup cookies (“monster”-sized, I guess), but I dislike big cookies and just formed them normally, in heaping tablespoons (really heaping—probably about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie).

I still have half a bag of the precious butterscotch chips left. Originally, I was thinking I’d try them in a different cookie (maybe the Oatmeal Scotchies recipe on the bag?), but now that I’ve grown to love these monster cookies so much, I’m seriously contemplating just making them again.

3 large eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon corn syrup
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
1½ cups chunky peanut butter
4½ cups rolled oats
½ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips
¾ cup butterscotch chips
¾ cup M&Ms (mini or full-sized)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease baking sheets or line them with parchment or silicon mats.

2. Combine eggs, both sugars, vanilla, corn syrup, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add melted butter, peanut butter, oats, and flour and mix thoroughly. Stir in the chocolate and butterscotch chips and the M&Ms. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes to allow the oats to absorb the butter.

3. Drop the dough by heaping tablespoons onto baking sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until lightly browned.

Yield: 4 to 5 dozen
Time: 1½ hours