cornbread

This is my usual cornbread recipe, suitable for everyone except those with legume allergies. I actually usually make only half this much, in my little tiny frying pan, to serve Rachael and me. I made a big pan this time, though, because I wanted the leftovers for dressing.

It's surprisingly fluffy and un-dry for a cornmeal-only cornbread. If you like your cornbread sweet, increase the sugar to 2T.

My Cornbread (vegan, gluten-free)

3T corn oil, divided
2C cornmeal
1t each sugar, salt, and baking powder
1/4C water whisked together with
1/4C garbanzo bean flour
1T each potato starch, tapioca flour, and flax meal
2C soy yogurt

Heat oven to 425ºF. Put 2T oil in your 10" round or 9" square cast-iron skillet, and put in the oven to heat while you mix up your batter. Mix the cornmeal, sugar, salt, and yogurt in a medium bowl and mix the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Stir the two mixtures together till just combined, then scrape into the hot skillet and bake for about 25 minutes, till it's golden-brown and has nice crusty edges.

squash gratin

Here's another squash recipe. I had it with some nice cornbread and fried cabbage.



Provençal Squash Gratin

Adapted from René Jouveau's La Cuisine Provençal

1kg winter squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1cm cubes
1/4C flour
6 cloves garlic finely chopped with
1/2C parsley and several sage leaves
salt and pepper
1/4C walnut oil

Toss squash with remaining ingredients, except the oil. Spread evenly into a shallow baking dish and drizzle with the oil. Bake at 325ºF for 2 hours, until it's very soft and has a nice, dark crust.

pumpkin lunch

I took squash-and-apple casserole to lunch every day during my last stretch of working, and it really was good. It held up well over the week, and went nicely with my squash bread and the sagey, cabbagey beans I made to go with it.

Squash Apple Casserole

1T olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
600g squash, peeled and sliced as thin as you can
800g apples (Winesaps are good, as would be Pink Ladies; Granny Smiths wouldn't soften up enough with baking), peeled, cored, and sliced about 1/2cm thick
1/3 cup brown sugar
1T tapioca flour
1t cinnamon
1/4t each nutmeg and salt
1/8t each pepper and cloves
1/2C almond flakes

Heat you oven to 400ºF. Fry the onion in the olive oil till limp and golden. If you have a casserole that can go on the stove do it in that, otherwise transfer the onions to your casserole when they're cooked. Mix all the dry ingredients besides the almonds in a little bowl. Arrange half of the squash slices over the onions, then scatter 1/4 of the sugar mixture over. Continue layering--apple, sugar, squash, sugar, apple, sugar--and top it off with the almond flakes. Cover it all up with tin foil and bake for half an hour. Take the tin foil off and bake for another 15 minutes, or until it feels done when you poke it with a little knife. Serve warm.

beety dinner

I finally cooked some of the beets I bought from the Billy Bob guy, and ate them with some brown rice cooked with banana squash, beet greens, and garlicky chanterelles. They were pretty successful, and this was a quick and easy way of fixing them.

Spicy Beets

1-2T peanut oil
1t each cumin and black mustard seed
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2t curry powder
1 serrano pepper, halved lengthwise and sliced (leave out or substitute a miler chile if you don't like hot food)
1T grated ginger
3 medium beets, trimmed but not peeled, coarsely grated
2 Roma tomatoes, cored, halved lengthwise, and sliced
1/2t salt
A handful of coarsely chopped coriander
lime wedges

Fry the seeds in the peanut oil over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes, then add the onion and cook till it begins to yellow. Add the curry powder, chile and ginger and cook for another minute or two. Stir in the beets, tomato, and salt. Cook for a little while, stirring around, then cover and turn the heat down and let stew for five minutes. Take off the heat and mix in the coriander. Squirt with some lime juice before eating.

squash bread

I lopped off a big piece of my squash and baked it, peeled it, and divided it up into 300g packets for the freezer. I used up a little bit on this Poilâne-inspired bread:

Sunflower Squash Bread

200g 60% hydration whole wheat or spelt starter
240g whole wheat flour
170g whole spelt flour
70g dark rye flour
250g bread flour
300g puréed squash
300g water
100g sunflower seeds
20g salt

Mix everything but the sunflower seeds and salt together, then let rest for about 20 minutes. Add the salt and seeds and knead till nice and elastic. Let rise till doubled. Shape into a boule, and let rise in a linen-lined basket till doubled. Don't let over-proof (I let this go a little too long, which I think reduced its oven-spring and made it be a little more dense than I'd hoped)! Slash, and bake on a stone preheated to 425ºF. Bake for 20 minutes, squirting with water a couple of times in the first 5 minutes, then turn the heat down to 375º. Bake 20-30 more minutes, till its internal temperature's about 208º.

apple tea

I was about to cut up some unpeeled apples for a squash-apple casserole (using up some of my banana squash) when I realised that if I peeled them, I could use the peels to make apple tea. I used to make apple tea for Tom Stratman and myself whenever I made an apple pie, and we both liked it better than the kind that's powdered like Tang (that kind's good, too, of course).

It tastes nice with any apple peels, but these winesaps made it a particularly pretty color.

Apple Tea

To make enough for two people, simmer the peels of four apples in 2.5C water for 5-10 minutes, then add a rounded teaspoonful of sugar. Pluck out the peels, then pour the tea into cups and drink it.

yummy, yummy sauerkraut

My sauerkraut was a great success! I opened it up on its two-week anniversary, and it was perfectly fermented, with no icky scum or yeastiness. The little bit of red cabbage turned everything but the pear peels pink. All the additional, non-cabbage ingredients made it taste kind of like the sauerkraut salad I make for our Fourth of July picnics. I ate it for all my subsequent work lunches, unembellished.

tozy's tofu pâté

I accidentally signed up to work 8 1/2 days in a row, so I decided I'd better fix myself a lot of food in advance so I'd have nice work lunches all ready for me. This tofu pâté (my version of Toby's) lasted me for six days. I ate it on Dunkeldinkelbrot, sprinkled with cabbage.

Tozy's Tofu Pâté

1/2C Brazil nuts, chopped
1 lb firm tofu
1T rice vinegar
1T lime (or lemon) juice
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 stalk of celery, with its leaves, chopped
1/2t salt
1/2t black salt
1 1/2t turmeric
1t dried onion flakes
1/4t black pepper
1/4t mustard flour

Grind the nuts in your blender or food processor, then add the remaining ingredients and grind until smooth. Unless you have a hippie blender, you will have to stop several times to stir things around.

cute squash

I bought this cute banana squash at the farmer's market--I was initially attracted to it because it was so vulgar looking, but I've heard that they're also tasty.

Next to it are the beets I bought from a nice man who looked and sounded much like Billy Bob Thornton. While I was waiting to pay for my beets he told (in a cute Arky accent) the lady in front of me that if she ate too many of those radishes she'd be channeling Timothy Leary.

baby shower

We had a potluck/baby shower for Elmira at work yesterday. It wasn't my usual weekend to work, so Elmira hadn't been expecting me to be there. When she saw me she was horrified, and said if she'd known I was coming she'd have left the meat out of her otherwise yummy-looking rice pilaf. It was made of basmati with tomatoes, string beans, and some kind of mammal flesh.



I made her these baby socks out of non-vegetarian yarn (Tofutsies, which includes chitin for its supposed antibacterial properties) because it was the most unisex of the machine-washable fingering-weight yarns at the Weaving Works.



I got up at 3:30 to make Moroccan apple salad



and Lebanese eggplant purée, both from Arabesque,



along with some little Turkish breads to eat them with.



Turkish Pides

Sponge
375g/3C all-purpose flour
3C water
1/8t instant yeast

Dough
the sponge
500g/4C flour
1.5T salt
1/3C olive oil
1t yeast

The morning before you plan to bake, mix the sponge ingredients together, cover, and let rest till you're about to go to bed that night. Then add the dough ingredients and knead till nicely elastic(it should be a pretty soft, well-hydrated dough). Cover back up and let rise while you sleep.

When you get up, set your oven (with your baking stone on an upper shelf) to 450ºF. Scrape the dough out onto a well-floured surface and divide into 40 pieces. Round them into little balls, and let rest for half an hour.



Stretch them into discs with the middles thinner than the outside edges, so they look like big, pale red blood cells. Arrange them on a piece of parchment paper (you should be able to fit 12-15 on a cookie sheet-sized piece) and slide them onto the hot baking stone.



Bake for about 7 minutes.