Dinner at CoHousing

Tonight Melissa from the Free Press is coming by to do an article on Burlington CoHousing during one of our community meal nights (these happen on the even numbered days of the month). A couple of weeks ago, the neighbor who had set this up asked me to be the lead cook. This means determining the menu, arranging for the food shopping, and then coordinating a team of 3 or 4 to do the prep and the clean-up.

When I spoke with Melissa when we first scheduled this, she told me she was hoping for a holiday sort of theme since that would play well this time of year. I scratched my head for a couple of days, and started poring over the November Gourmet again and came up with the idea of "The Meal I Couldn't Force Other People to Cook For Me." Which I thought was a super idea but then Melissa pointed out that the Freeps couldn't print a current recipe from a major food magazine.

Oh. Right.

Have I mentioned that this is Melissa Pasanen, author of the incredibly beautiful, delicious, and terribly well-reviewed Cooking with Shelburne Farms? I mean, like, no pressure!

So after taking a deep breath, I looked at the menu again, and realized I could make the main course into an original recipe, which technically happens if you change four things. Which means that tonight my team and I will be cooking:

Mushroom, White Bean & Roasted Garlic Pie
Serves 8

1 C. small white beans, dried (or 1 15 oz. can, drained)
3 C. water
1 T. unsalted butter
1 T. olive oil
2-4 garlic cloves from 1 head roasted garlic,* chopped into smaller pieces
9 scallions, finely chopped, divided
1 T. fresh thyme leaves
1 lb. mixed mushrooms (white, cremini, portobello), sliced
1/4 c. dry Madeira (I don't have this around and it's too cold to go out so I'll be using a mix of port and dry red wine)
1 C. whole milk ricotta
1 lb. pkg. frozen puff pastry, thawed (recipe calls for all-butter - maybe your grocery store sells this but not mine)
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 t. water and a pinch of salt

If using dried beans (cheaper, better texture, and not filled with salt like canned, so do this if you can), cook them either by soaking overnight and then cooking in 3 cups of water until tender, or by placing on high in a crockpot for 5 or 6 hours or until tender but firm. (Since I'm quadrupling this recipe, the crockpot definitely made since today.) Drain well and set aside.

Melt butter in a 12-in. heavy skillet over medium heat. Add half the chopped scallions, and cook 2 - 3 minutes. Add mushrooms, thyme and garlic, 1 t. salt, 1/2 t. pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally until just softened. Add Madeira (or whatever crazy thing you're going to substitute) and simmer for 1 minute. Transfer to a large bowl, stir in drained beans and cool completely.

Stir in ricotta, remaining scallions, and taste for salt and pepper.

While filling cools, roll out pastry. If it's in one piece, cut into 2 equal pieces. Roll each out on a lightly floured surface into an 11" square. Stack on a parchment-lined baking sheet with a piece of parchment between them. Cover with plastic wrap and cool for 30 minutes.

Put a large baking sheet on rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 400.

Set aside one pastry square on parchment. Spread cooled filling evenly over pastry on the baking sheet, leaving one-inch border all around. Brush border with a bit of egg wash, and use the parchment to invert the second square on top, pressing lightly to seal the border. Brush top with remaining egg wash, then crimp border with a fork and trim with pizza wheel or sharp knife.

Cut a few small steam vents in top of pie and decoratively score pastry. Slide pie on parchment onto preheated baking sheet in oven and bake until puffed and deep golden brown, about 45 minutes.

The picture here? Of the professionally photographed original recipe. I'll post mine from the actual real-kitchen version tomorrow, and will report on the results.

Up My Sleeve ...

My favorite secret ingredients:

1. Umeboshi vinegar (Made from salted, pickled plums. Very popular with macrobiotic cooking - intensely sour, intensely salty. Use a little for vinagrettes, rice, all sorts of things.).
   
2. Canned pumpkin. (I use in all sorts of pancakes, waffles, baked goods. It adds a ton of nutrition and great color and usually gets by the minicritics as long as I don't overdo.)
   
3. Ground flaxseed. (Ups the nutritional value of whatever I'm cooking, and has a kind of nice nutty flavor.)
   
4. Ground green chile powder. (But I got mine on a visit to New Mexico at a farmers' market, and dangit I'm almost out.)
   
5. Ground ginger. (Nearly always substitute for cinnamon if appropriate.)
   
6. Dried orange or lemon peel. (Many things benefit from this!)
   
7. Dark chocolate everything: cocoa powder, chips, chopped, whatever. (Milk chocolate wastes my time, flavorwise.)
   
8. Olive oil. (I use it for just about everything that calls for a liquid fat, except high-heat sautees and the like, which do better with grapeseed oil.)
   

NEW NAME- new address coming soon!

Cranky Admin Greg here. I just wanted to alert you to the new name of Cheryl's blog! CRANKYCAKES. It pretty much says it all.

ALSO- this blog will be changing into crankycakes.com. So very soon you will be alerted by Cheryl when to redirect your RSS subscription and or your bookmarks. Back to you Cheryl... CRANKY ADMIN GREG OUT.

The Chocolate Oatmeal Cupcakes

I'm equally compulsive and ambivalent about inserting stealth ingredients into the foods my kids eat. I don't own the Jessica Seinfeld book, but I've heard it hotly contested - this idea that the best way to get vegetables into kids is to hide them in things they already love. After all, if the only cauliflower that tykes encounter is pureed in their beloved mac & cheese, how will they ever learn to really eat it?

It's a good argument. And one I probably would have made before I met my strong-willed children. Maybe yours are different, but mine only eat things they actually like. And now that the 3 year old has discovered that he has his own identity, he likes to exert it by liking the opposite of everything his brother cares for.

Here is a list of the vegetables they'll both happily eat in their pure form:

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Well ... this is a slight exaggeration. They both like marinara sauce.

After years of self-examination and head-shaking, I've decided that I do actually want them to consume vitamin A and fiber and things. So I stealth vegetables into baked goods. I did it long before Mrs. Seinfeld's book, and I've got a few tried and true methods.

So when it was cupcake time the other day, I pulled out my 2nd most frequent technique: the pureed-spinach-in-chocolate-maneuver. Here's the recipe, which I based on the Joy of Cooking's Oatmeal Sheet Cake:


1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (dark if possible)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon powdered dried orange peel
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup steamed or thawed frozen spinach, very well drained
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vani.lla


Combine the oatmeal and hot water and let them stand for 20 minutes.

All of the rest of the ingredients should be at room temp. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease or line the cups in a cupcake tin (if memory serves, this will make 12 full size and 24 mini cupcakes).

Whisk together the flours, soda, spices and salt. In a separate bowl beat the butter and sugars until they're lightened in color and texture. Years ago I learned that this step is the crux of baking - where your texture and rise and everything happen. Don't wimp out here!

Add the eggs and vanilla and use a blender or immersion blender to mix in the spinach until it's pureed to smithereens. And in the oat mixture, then the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 - 25 minutes. Let cool briefly in the pan, and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

I frosted the larger ones with dark chocolate fudge frosting, and then showed what a complete sucker I am by adding rainbow sprinkles, along with the M&M-ish sunflower seed candies that my little guy painstakingly removes from each one. The minis I left unfrosted so as to be more appropriate for morning snack, but then a friend absconded with them to a D&D game and that was the last I saw of those.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that these cupcakes don't quite reach the level of Bad Ass. They're a little bit crumbly, and the oatmeal makes the texture a little weird/chewy. But they're chocolatey and reasonably full of nutritious things and the monkeyboys eat them so they'll probably make repeat appearances.

But First: Bread

All right. The cupcakes are done. Here's a picture of one, even (they're full size by the way, just being held by a friend's enormous hand). I'll share the recipe and talk about them tomorrow. But right now, I'm eating the whole wheat pumpkin bread we made yesterday and am reminded how much I adore this recipe from "have cake will travel."

I've made this a lot. Bread is one of the few things that both my wild monkeys will deign to eat (though one only as toast or a sandwich, one only with butter and untoasted), so I tend to pay a bit of attention to it. In the summer, we get Gerard's bread with our CSA share from the Intervale. The rest of the year we're on our own and I like to make our own good stuff as much as possible. And now that both crazy beasts are old enough to help, it's even a rockin' good family time - for the 6.25 minutes that I can capture their attention.

So yesterday when I got home from yet another grocery store trip to discover that I hadn't bought bread (but at least I had had the sense to backtrack for the milk I missed before we checked out the first time), we scrubbed up and got to work. As I was tossing ingredients on the counter, I discovered that I only had half the squash puree in the fridge that I had thought. Rather than making only one loaf (I always double), I decided to toss in 3/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce instead.

Another adjustment that I've gotten in the habit of is using 2/3 whole wheat white flour, and 1/3 unbleached white. The bread is great both ways, but I like the slightly lighter version that you get if you use some white flour.

For some reason, this time it just didn't rise quite as well as usual. I'm sure I should have done the oven-on-f0r-one-minute trick to get it off to a nice warm start, but I didn't. So I gave it a good long time rising, and it eventually came out of the oven looking great - not as golden as when made with all the suggested pumpkin, but a nice color anyway.

And sitting here eating the bread abandoned by the monkeyboys as they've scurried off to their day, I must admit it tastes as good as ever.