blueberries, blueberries

Blueberry season seems to be going on and on this year. I got a huge thing of bargain blueberries about a month ago, and I'm still seeing blueberry bargains at the store, so I thought I'd better post a couple of blueberry recipes before it's too late.

First, a blueberry-banana jam. Though you might not think it, bananas are high in pectin which helps this jam gel nicely (blueberries seem to have less pectin than black and raspberries). Starting the jam the night before and letting it rest overnight means you'll heat up the kitchen a lot less than you would if you cooked it all at once.

Following that, a recipe for blueberry muffins. Rachael thought these weren't sweet enough and I thought they were just right: if you like your muffins to taste like cupcakes, feel free to add half-again as much sugar.



Bluebana Jam

makes 6-7 1/2 pints

1 small lemon, halved and thinly sliced, pips tied in a cheesecloth bag along with
4 cloves
1C water
3 bananas, sliced (200g)
2lb blueberries
2lb sugar

Simmer the lemon slices and the little bag of pips and cloves in the water till the lemon's tender. Add it to all the remaining ingredients in a big pot, bring to the boil (stirring frequently so the stuff at the bottom doesn't stick) and cook till the sugar's dissolved. Take off the heat and cover, and let rest overnight.

The next day bring it back to the boil and cook for about five minutes, till it's turned to jam (it should be 221 or 222ºF). Pack into jars and boiling-water-bathe for five minutes.





Blueberry Spelt Muffins

makes 12 muffins

325g whole spelt flour
110g sugar
2t baking powder
1/2t baking soda
1/2t salt
2t powdered ginger

1/2C soy yogurt
1C soy or other milk
1/3C oil, your choice
1t vanilla

220g blueberries

Heat the oven to 425ºF and prepare your muffin tins (grease or line with cupcake papers). Whisk the dry ingredients together in a biggish bowl and the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl, then combine them along with the blueberries. Mix just till it looks like nice batter, then fill your muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes.

canning fun

My friend Jennie came over for a day of canning--we made lavender peach jam (we cooked it till it was 224ºF this time, and it set nicely) and Yummy Banana Chutney. The chutney has to rest for six weeks before it will be truly ready, but it's already pretty yummy. The chutney had to cook for quite a while, so while we waited we had okara oaty bread and tomato eggplant salad for a treat.





The okara oaty bread was a regular soda bread incorporating the sludge I had left after making almond-hemp milk yesterday. I'm sure any similar stuff would work--genuine soy okara, or ground-up oats from oat milk....



Oaty Bread

makes 1 small loaf

160g coarse, wholemeal flour
100g all-purpose flour
1/2t each salt, baking soda
25g oleo
1 batch of okara
100g rolled oats
200ml soy yogurt, about--the amount needed will depend on how thoroughly you squeezed your okara

Heat your oven to 425ºF and grease a smallish bread pan (my 8-1/2" x 4-1/2" one is a little too big). Whisk together the flours, salt, and soda, and rub in the oleo. Rub in the okara, stir in the oats, then mix in the yogurt till everything's wet. Add more yogurt if necessary to get a nice wet dough. Spread it into the greased pan, cut a deep slash down the middle, the pop it into the oven and bake for about 45 minutes. It won't darken much, but should smell nice and sound hollow when you thump its bottom.

milkmaid

I got a soy milk maker a couple of months ago, and I really like it--it can make grain milks, mung bean milk, and nut and seed milks as well as soy milk, and all for much less than buying them at the store. A quart of soy milk costs at least $2.00, and enough soybeans to make a quart only costs about 15¢. My favorite milk so far has been using half soybeans, half brown rice: the brown rice gets rid of the beany flavor and adds creaminess to the milk--it's as thick as whole cow's milk, but without the unpleasant (to me) mouth-coating unctuousness.

Today I made a quick-and-easy milk that didn't require my new machine or any cooking at all--just a good blender and some cheesecloth. It has a nice, nutty taste and should have some omega-3 from the hemp seed.

Almond-Hemp Milk

1 1/4 oz hemp seeds
2 oz almonds
5C water
optional: salt, sugar, vanilla to taste (I like my milk plain)

Soak the seeds and almonds in a couple of cups of water for a few hours, then blend thoroughly in your blender. Add the rest of the water and blend some more. Pour through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a big bowl. When most of it's gone through, gather up the cheesecloth and squeeze the rest of the milk out. You can add the remains to some muffins or something if you feel bad about throwing them in the compost.

Mango!

There have been bargain mangoes around lately (2/$1 at Safeway this week!), so I have been buying them to eat for breakfast and to make things like apricot-mango jam (not really a success: it tasted nice but didn't set). I made this salad for Rachael, and it was the only part of dinner she liked--the stripey-pan tofu and oniony bulgar were too healthy for her refined palate. It's based on a salad our friend Mely brought to a church picnic long ago. When I asked her later for the recipe she said she couldn't remember, she'd just made it up: this is my reconstruction.

There are all kinds of methods for cutting up a mango, but whatever method you use, you should be sure to get all of the peel off as it can cause a terrible rash. I have a special mango peeler that gets off a nice, thick layer:



Fil-Am Mango Salad

makes enough for four people, or two with leftovers

a sweetish onion, thinly sliced
2T rice vinegar or lime juice
salt, black pepper
2 under-ripe mangoes, peeled and cut up into biggish pieces
a cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, cut into thickish slices
1 or 2 tomatoes, cored and cut into suitably-sized pieces
a little sugar,if necessary
some lettuce, preferably a crunchy kind like iceberg or romaine, ripped into bite-size pieces

In a big bowl,sprinkle the onion with the vinegar or lime juice, season with salt and pepper, and let soak while you prepare the remaining ingredients. When everything's cut up,lay the lettuce on your serving dish and mix everything else together. Taste for seasoning--it may need a little sugar if the mangoes were really under-ripe. Pile it all on top of the lettuce and serve.

crunchy granola

I have always thought that granola and I had the same birthplace--Chico--but this article makes it clear that granola's actually a Texan, and only moved to Chico in early childhood. We made it once when I was little, and it turned out well, but Annie was so horrified by the huge amount of oil in the recipe that we never tried it again and stopped buying it at the health food store.

Last January I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about modern, un-hippified varieties of granola, including one in which applesauce takes the place of much of the oil. I tried it and it was good. Here's my version--it makes a little more (it keeps well, so why not?) and has even less fat. I don't add any fruit, because it's easy enough to add fresh or dried fruit as you serve it, depending on your mood and what you have on hand. You can, of course, vary the nuts and seeds according to your tastes.



Crunchy Granola
makes about 5 pints

dry ingredients:
450g rolled oats (or other rolled grains)
150g each flaked almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds
100g each sesame seeds, flax seeds
2t cinnamon
1t each ginger, kosher salt

wet ingredients:
1 medium apple, cored and roughly chopped (or 200g applesauce)
100g (1/3C) agave nectar
1/4C (80g) maple syrup
2T oil (I used canola)

Heat oven to 300°. Line two cookie sheets (the kind with edges) with tin foil.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a big bowl. Blend the wet ingredients in a blender till you can see no discrete pieces of apple, then mix into the dry stuff with your hands. Spread out over the cookie sheets and bake for 40-50 minutes, every 10 minutes or so stirring the granola and shuffling the pans around in the oven so that they will bake evenly.

Let cool thoroughly before putting into jars.

This is less sweet than granola from the store, so you'll want to be sure to add some fruit upon serving.

springtime parfaits

I've been getting strawberries and rhubarb in my vegetable box lately. If I was cooking for just myself I'd have made strawberry tapioca with some of the strawberries, but Rachael inexplicably doesn't like it. I used to make these strawberry parfaits from Eating Well at least a couple of times a year during strawberry season, so thought Id try a veganised version. It was a success, so I followed it the next week with a rhubarb version which I thought turned out even better. If you're a fan of strawberry-rhubarb, you could try using raw, sliced strawberries in place of the banana in the rhubarb version.

This should make four or five parfaits, depending on the size of your glasses--mine are 250ml, or a little over 8oz, and I get five with them.

Strawberry or Rhubarb Parfaits

for the cream:
1 1/2T tapioca flour
2t custard powder
3T sugar
1 1/2C almond milk
2t orange zest

for rhubarb:
1lb rhubarb, trimmed and sliced
1C sugar (7oz)
3T orange juice
2t Minute Tapioca
1/4t cardamom
2t clementine cordial or similar
2 bananas, thinly sliced

for strawberries:
1 pint strawberries, cored and sliced
1T sugar
2t clementine cordial

To make the cream, mix the tapioca flour, custard powder, sugar, and 2T of the almond milk in a small heavy pan. Once all of the lumps are mixed out, whisk in the rest of the milk along with the orange zest. Bring to the boil and turn the heat down and simmer for a couple of minutes, stirring frequently. Take off the heat and let cool for about twenty minutes.

To make the rhubarb, mix together all of the ingredients except the bananas in a medium pan. Bring to a simmer and cook, covered--stirring frequently--till the rhubarb is very soft. Take off of the heat and stir in the bananas and cordial. Cool for about twenty minutes.

To make the strawberries, mix everything in a bowl and let rest for about twenty minutes.

Once everything has rested and cooled, assemble your parfaits: starting with a layer of fruit, divvy up the cream and fruit among the glasses. With my glasses, three layers of fruit and two of cream worked out well. Cover the glasses and chill the in the fridge for an hour or so. These keep well for at least three days.

olive bread

My usual olive bread is a sourdough with a little bit of rye flour as its base, but I recently had a request for an olive ciabatta recipe so I decided to branch out. I made a couple of loaves of this--one for me and Rachael to sneak in to the movies, and another to take in for a work treat. Rachael didn't really like it (she's not a big olive bread fan in general), but it was a great success at work.

I usually measure my bread ingredients with a scale--as well as being more accurate, it's easier and less messy and makes for fewer dishes to wash--but have converted to volume measures for any scaleless readers.

Olive Ciabatta
makes 2 loaves

poolish:
180g bread flour (1 1/2C)
180g water (3/4C)
1/8t instant yeast

dough:
400g bread flour (3 1/4C)
25g toasted wheat germ (1/4C)
260ml water (1C +2T)
12g salt (2t)
1t yeast
2t fresh thyme, or 1t dry
225g unpitted olives (1 1/2C)--I used kalamatas because that's what I had, but use any olives you like.
all of the poolish

The night before you bake, mix the poolish ingredients together in a little bowl and let rise, covered, overnight till it's very bubbly.



In the morning, thoroughly mix together all of the dough ingredients except the olives. This dough will be very sticky, so if you don't want to use your mixer to knead it do as I did and stretch and fold* it three times in the first hour of its rising. Let the dough rise for about three hours altogether, till about tripled.

Meanwhile, smash the olives with the side of a big knife, then tear them in half and get the pits out. Let them drain on a towel while the dough rises.



Dump the dough out onto a well-floured counter and stretch out into a big rectangle (about 10"x14"), and scatter 2/3 of the olives over it. Fold the rectangle into thirds (like a letter), stretch a little more, scatter with the remaining olives, and fold into thirds again. Cut it in half and shape each half into a round, tucking in any exposed olives.



Let the dough rest for ten minutes, then stretch out into ciabatta shapes on a piece of parchment paper on a peel or back of a cookie sheet.



Veil the shaped loaves with flour, cover with a cloth, then let rise till very light, one to one-and-a-half hours.



At least 45 minutes before you bake, preheat your oven with its baking stone in it to 475°. When the loaves are risen, squirt them with water and then slide them onto the stone. After ten minutes, turn the oven down to 425°. Bake for about 25 minutes total, till well-browned and until the loaves' internal temperature is at least 205° (mine got up to 211° and weren't overdone).




*I just do this in the bowl, not laying it out on parchment paper, and stretch mostly lengthwise instead of making nice rectangles. It works just as well.