Mushroom etoufee

Happy Thanksgiving, happy Hanukkah, happy anything else you're happy about! Cajun/creole food is something I'm happy about right now—I'm totally going to take a post-graduation vacation to New Orleans!—so instead of mushroom gravy I decided to make a mushroom etoufee for Thanksgiving this year. The internet doesn't seem to have much consensus on what makes an etoufee an etoufee, so I went with a variation on this recipe. It turned out amazingly: savory and rich, with a good balance of creaminess, zing, and kick. You're supposed to have it with rice but I think it will be splendid with stuffing.

2 T butter
2 small onions, minced
4 stalks celery, minced
1 green pepper, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
3 bay leaves
20 oz criminis, coarsely chopped
1 oz dried fancy mushrooms, rehydrated and minced
1/4 t cayenne
1/4 t paprika
2 t cornstarch
1 stock cube
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 c cream
1/2 c 1% milk
5 oz spinach, chopped
4 sprigs parsley, minced

Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a large pot. Sweat the onions until translucent, then add the celery, green pepper, garlic, and bay leaves, and cook until soft. Add the mushrooms, cayenne, and paprika, and cook until the mushrooms are done. Add the cornstarch and stock cube and stir until dissolved, then add the tomatoes and dairy. Slowly bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, turn the heat down a bit, and simmer for at least 15 minutes. Add the greenery and keep simmering for at least half an hour. Adjust the seasonings and liquid, and serve over a mushy absorbent starch.

Brownie bites

Just doing what Deb tells me to, procrastinating from finishing my thesis by making easy delicious easily-transportable brownies. Procrastination or not, the thesis and therefore my graduate career will be wrapping up extremely soon, and I'm looking forward to a higher frequency of food creation extravaganzas—expect more posts soon!

3 oz unsweetened chocolate, roughly chopped
1 stick butter
1 1/3 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/4 t salt
2/3 c flour

Preheat oven to 350F and spray-grease a mini cupcake pan. In a medium bowl, melt the chocolate and butter together in a double-boiler or in a couple 30-sec spurts in the microwave. Whisk in the sugar, then eggs and vanilla, then salt and flour. Fill the mini cupcake tins almost full; there will probably be a little bit extra batter after filling 24 mini cupcake wells, which can go in a second pan if you have one, or 2 wells of a regular cupcake pan, or whatever. Bake the mini brownies for 15-17 min, larger brownies for longer, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 min in the pan, then transfer the brownies to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Persimmon pancakes

It's persimmon time again! I made a double batch of persimmon bread last week and that recipe is still amazing. This morning I tried this pancake recipe, which is tasty but not as thick and fluffy as I prefer. Next time I might try this one.

3 T melted butter
pulp from 1 Hachiya persimmon
1/4 c yogurt
1 c milk
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 c oat bran (or oats ground in the food processor)
1/2 c cornmeal
1/2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
2 t brown sugar
1/4 t salt

Separately whisk together wet ingredients (butter through vanilla) and dry ingredients (oats through salt) then whisk wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Let sit for a few minutes while the pan heats up and the batter thickens (it will still be runny). Cook pancakes with 1/4 c worth of batter each.

Tomato jam

Welcome back from England, me! My usual travel post will be up soon, but there were more urgent garden matters that demanded my attention first. Just look at all those tomatoes I picked! (And that's only about half of the cherry tomatoes.)

Six pounds of ripe garden tomatoes in the cupboard, with more on the way, and with Lester stuck in England and unable to enjoy the fruits of his labor... It's preserving time. At first taste, this jam is a bit too sweet, but the aftertaste is balanced and nicely spicy. I'd add a bit less sugar next time.

1.5 lb cherry tomatoes, halved
1 lb regular tomatoes, diced
1 1/4 c sugar
juice + zest of 2 Meyer lemons
1 T red wine vinegar
1 shallot, finely minced
1 pasilla pepper, finely minced
1" ginger chunk, grated
1/2 t salt

Put everything in a pot and simmer uncovered for a bit more than an hour, stirring occasionally and squishing up any intact tomato bits, until the water has cooked off and the mixture is thick and spreadable (it won't set up much more in the jars). Transfer to 3 cups worth of sterilized jars.

Blackberry almond muffins

It's blackberry season again, and I still have frozen blackberries from last summer! Gotta step up my game. I haven't really been slacking though—in the last few weeks I've been busy making other summery things (like okra+shishitos and shakshuka), and other sweet things (like chocolate chip cookies), and other awesome things (like apps and more apps). And tomorrow, Lester and I are heading to England for a couple weeks, so you can look forward to some good British travel posts in the near future.

But this morning: just some quick and easy muffins. Tau approves.

1.5 c frozen blackberries
1/2 stick butter
1/3 c sugar
1 egg
3/4 c milk
juice of 1 large Meyer lemon
1.5 c flour
1/2 c oats
1/2 c slivered almonds
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 350F and put the berries in a colander to defrost and drain a bit. Melt the butter in a 2-c pyrex, then stir in the rest of the wet ingredients (sugar through lemon). Combine the dry ingredients (flour through salt) in a medium bowl, then stir in the wet ingredients and berries until just combined. Scoop into 12 greased muffin-tin cups and sprinkle a healthy pinch of turbinado on each one. Bake for 25 min until a toothpick comes out clean and the tops are starting to brown. (If your berries aren't frozen, the baking time will be up to 10 min shorter.) Transfer to a cooling rack, let cool until the berries won't burn your mouth, and enjoy.

Yarn side project: hippos!

Happy welcome-to-life, David and Cat's baby, and happy moving-on-with-life, Aaron! Somehow I decided that these very different celebrations should each be commemorated with a little squishable crocheted hippo.

For both hippos, I exactly followed this pattern using this yarn. The only difference was the crochet hook: the bigger yellow one was on a H hook (recommended for the yarn), and the smaller red one was on a F hook (tighter stitches -> hopefully more babyproof).

Rhubarb-blackberry coffee cake

Happy 4th of July, all! I don't know how to modify this blogger site in protest, so I made something tasty instead. This is half rhubarb from Lester's garden (the first two ripe stalks!), half foraged blackberries that we froze since last summer, and just a few cape gooseberries from the garden for good measure. It's vaguely red-white-and-blue, but it more reminds me of Alan and Lester talking about British summertime baking—my kind of celebration. And the crumble top is friggin amazing.

filling:
1/2 lb tart fruit (eg rhubarb, blackberries, cape gooseberries)
1/3 c sugar
2 t cornstarch
1/2 t ginger

Prepare the fruit (chop the rhubarb, defrost the blackberries, etc). Toss everything together and set aside.

crumble:
1 stick salted butter, melted
1/3 c turbinado sugar
1/3 c sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ginger
1 3/4 c flour

Stir the sugars and spices into the melted butter until the white sugar is dissolved, then stir in the flour until it's firm and crumbly but thoroughly moistened. Set aside.

cake:
1 c flour
1/2 c sugar
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
3/4 stick softened butter, cut into pieces
1/3 c yogurt
1 egg
2 t vanilla extract

Stir together the dry ingredients (flour through baking powder) in a medium bowl. Stir in the butter, kind of like biscuit dough. Mix the wet ingredients (yogurt through vanilla) in a small bowl then stir into the dry ingredients in two batches.

assembly:
Preheat the oven to 325F and butter a 8" square pan. Spread the batter evenly in the bottom of the pan and top with the fruit. (Smitten Kitchen said to leave a bit of batter aside and dollop it on top of the fruit, which I did, but I don't think it makes much of a difference.) Sprinkle the crumble over the fruit, breaking up large chunks and squishing together sandy bits to make roughly 1/2" crumble bits. Bake for 50 min until a toothpick comes out clean.