DIY Figgy Newtons & Preserved Figs

These will not mesh with the luau theme of my aunt's party this weekend,  but 'tis the season.  And if we can control ourselves from eating them all, here's what we'll bring:

Figgy Newtons
1 stick cold butter, cubed
1/3 cup evaporated cane sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3 cups fig preserves (recipe follows)

Drain figs from their syrup (I'm reducing the syrup to save for another recipe). Puree figs into a thick paste.  Return figs to stove and simmer, stirring, to a thick jam consistency.

In a large bowl, cream butter & sugar together.  Add egg, vanilla, and zest and combine.  Add flour, baking powder, and salt and stir until well combined.

Using lots of flour for dusting, roll out dough into long stripes about 3-4 inches wide, 1/4 inch thick.  Spread fig paste and fold dough in half lengthwise and seal dough by pressing together along the edges.  Cut into squares and bake on parchment on cookie sheets at 350 degrees for 25 minutes until cookies begin to brown.

Fig Preserves
2 cups filtered water
6 cups evaporated cane sugar
9 inches of cinnamon stick
a lemon, seeded, quartered, sliced thin
1/4 orange, seeded, sliced thin

8 cups (36 ounces) fresh figs from my mom's neighbor's tree, washed & destemmed

Combine water, sugar and cinnamon in a pot and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and add figs and citrus slices.  Cover and cook 45 minutes.

If not using right away, can by filling sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space, add lids and rings (not too tight).  Boil jars for 15 minutes on a canning rack.  Remove from water bath and let sit, undisturbed overnight.

(adapted from HGTV recipes)

Spinach Linguini with Mushrooms

Even though I was babysitting 2 little girls, that did not detour me from making this dish.  The girls both assured me that they liked mushrooms (but I keep the pasta separate just in case).

1/2 pound spinach linguini, boiled until al dente in salted water
olive oil
1/2 red onion, quartered and sliced thin
sea salt
a few sprigs of thyme, leaves only
6 ounces cremini mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
1 large clove garlic, minced
black pepper
small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
small handful pinenuts, toasted

Cook and drain pasta, return to pot and toss with a drizzle of olive oil to keep from sticking together.

In a large saute pan, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat and lightly caramelize the onions (add thyme also if using dried), stirring frequently.  Increase heat to medium-high, add another tablespoon of olive oil and the mushrooms, stirring frequently until browned.  Turn off heat and add garlic (and thyme if fresh), stir and let sit covered for a couple minutes.  Add sea salt & pepper to taste.  Serve over pasta, topped with parsley & pinenuts, drizzling more olive oil as needed.

No-spouse Acai Bowl

While my spouse is away this weekend, I'm taking the opportunity to make foods I love but he can't or won't eat (for this recipe, that means greens & coconut)...

an acai packet, unsweetened (not something I usually buy but I had a coupon)
3 smallish lacinato kale leaves (love this stuff!)
1/2 frozen banana (free from work: one (of many) major bonus of working at a grocery co-op)
1/3 mango (also free from the co-op)
a handful of frozen berries (I've been stockpiling from this summer's farmers market bounty)
a generous splash of coconut milk or apple juice
spoonful of local honey or 1-2 dates
1/2 teaspoon local bee pollen (optional)
1/2 teaspoon cacao nibs (optional)
slice of fresh ginger (optional)

I do not have the uber-expensive vitamix but I do have a quality blender and it handles acai packets like a champ! Add just enough coconut milk (or other liquid) so it will blend well.  Top with fresh fruit (strawberries from JR Organics Farm) and granola. Update: new favorite acai bowl topping - shredded coconut!

Sourdough Pancakes

Wow.  It is really unbelievable how good these are.  Who knew?  They sounded pretty weird when I first read about them in Wild Fermentation.

But they are ethereal, quite literally.  And of course delicious; actually, the most delicious pancakes I've ever had.  An if you're the type who wakes up hungry (I am not), there's practically no waiting for these to make it to your plate.

This recipe is adapted from The Tassajara Bread Book:

The night before:
1/2 cup starter
2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or flour of your choice)
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons rolled oats (or flour or other grain)
2 tablespoons wheat germ (or flour or other grain)
2 cups lukewarm filtered water

Mix together in a glass bowl, cover with a towel and let stand at room temperature in a draft-free spot overnight.

In the morning:
Remove a cup of the mix (this can be used your starter moving forward).  To the remaining mixture, add
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup milk (or more for a thinner batter)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons rapadura sugar
1-2 tablespoons of chia, hemp, or other seeds or nuts (optional)

Mix ingredients gently but thoroughly.  Melt a couple pats of butter in a skillet or griddle on medium high heat.  Pour small (close to silver dollar-sized) pancakes and flip when they bubble and have cooked edges (really quickly).  Cook them about another 20-30 seconds (until cooked).

Serve with your favorite pancake toppings.

This also makes heavenly light, crispy waffles!

Spiced Nectarine Preserves

I recently tried a spiced nectarine preserve (or at least, that's what I'm guessing it was) with goat cheese on a crisp, thin bread slice that had been baked with olive oil.  I was at a wedding and the bride is foodie, urban homesteader, and event planner.  It was, of course, a beautiful, delicious farm reception, complete with handmade marshmallows for fair trade chocolate s'mores we made ourselves over a bonfire during a stunning sunset.  Her brother catered, the groom served a homebrewed saison, and wood-fired pizzas were made, while we watched, with locally grown ingredients.  We ate on locally crafted wood tables with sweet, small bouquets of flowers most likely picked on the farm.  It was an affair after my own heart.

And as soon as I tasted those preserves, I knew I had to try to make them.  And lucky for me, nectarines are in season; so I asked my friend/farmers market vendor selling nectarines if they had any overripe fruit they couldn't sell, picked up multiple pounds of the stuff, did some recipe research, waited for the sun to set and the weather to cool a bit before building up a sweat over a hot stove, and came up with this...

6 cups chopped nectarines (remove pits but keep the skins - the pectin is in the skin), from Smit Orchards
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice, from a Schaner Farm lemon
3 cups rapadura sugar
rounded 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
a slightly crushed cardamom pod (try to fish it out before canning)
a scant pinch of ground cayenne, just for kicks
1 teaspoon homemade vanilla extract

Cook fruit, juice, & sugar at a soft boil for 30-minutes; reduce heat if needed to prevent burning.  Stir often and skim off foam from the surface.  Stir in spices, turn off heat and stir for 5 minutes.  Ladle into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Wipe rims and jars clean with a damp cloth.  Seal each jar with a lid and barley tighten bands.  Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Wild Yeasted Sourdough Stoneground (mostly) Whole Wheat Bread

I have always wanted to be able to make wonderful, toothsome, crusty, chewy bread.  I've tried several different recipes and methods over the years, and have had very limited success with this endeavor, which discourages me from trying very often.

But with renewed ferver, I'm making bread, a la Michael Pollan's Cooked.  I located rye (in People's bulk department) and stoneground heirloom whole wheat flour (packaged and much more expensive than the bulk department). I've wild-caught yeast, which was almost instantaneously bubbly (raising my hopes for this attempt), mixed the leaven and soaked the flours (I'm using filtered water because San Diego water is highly suspect).  My leaven wasn't as active as it needed to be and sank (along with my hopes a bit) instead of floating in water, so I added commercial yeast (much to my chagrin) per his suggestion.  I've mixed leaven into flour mixture with sea salted-water and bulk fermented.

I love the sourdough smell of the starter!  I love the sourdough smell on my hands!  I love that he encourages mixing everything with your hands.

Shaped the dough into 2 loaves (wow, that's a sticky dough but not dissimilar to Grandma Robert's rolls, the only bread I've made well consistently and loved) and proofed for days (longer than intended) in the refrigerator.  Trying to get it out of the bowl and into the very hot dutch oven involved a lot of scraping.  And trying to get the beautifully baked loaf out of the dutch oven involved a lot of prying with various implements.  It did not escape unscathed; part of the bottom stuck to the dutch oven.  How does one prevent that from happening? [Answer: allow the dutch oven to preheat for 15-30 minutes at 500 degrees - then it's much easier to pop out]

But the bread was wonderful!  Crusty, chewy, toothsome, sour, whole-wheaty goodness!  I made really good (dare I say excellent?) bread!  True, it could have had more airlift but whole wheat is notoriously height-challenged.

And I have a problem with throwing away 80% of the starter every day; this is too wasteful.  Seems to me recipes of yore would use that portion of the starter as the leaven for the daily bread baking.  So I need to play a bit more with this recipe before I publish my own version (so for now, here's my recipe from previous attempts).  But I've never felt so encouraged!

Eat Produce for Breakfast (a long-winded recipe for Vegetable Hash)

Bread and sugar in various permutations seem to be the mainstays of breakfast in our typical western modern diet.  And while I absolutely love fresh, homemade, organic, whole grain muffins/waffles/quick breads/biscuits/scones/toast/pancakes/french toast, I'm constantly trying to make them healthier or I skip them altogether for a fruit- or veggie-based option.

If we're not quite ready to quit our sugary bread breakfasts, we can improve the taste and wholesomeness of our favorite scratch comfort recipes.  Using whole grain flours (especially stone ground) is a good way to start the rehab process: begin trading out 1/4 of the white stuff and gradually increase the ratio of whole grains to refined grains to ease your taste buds into it.  Step 2 might be to stir in your choice of seeds, nuts, fruit or veggies into the mix: try chopped almonds and dried cherries, or pecans with chopped apples or pears, or walnuts with shredded squash.  Bake up and serve topped with a heavy spoonful of seasonal sliced fruit, cooked up into a compote or served fresh.  Or take rolls, biscuits and pastries in a savory direction: decrease or eliminate sugar from the recipe, and stir in or stuff with a spoonful of baked sweet potato and fresh rosemary, sauteed peppers and cilantro, sun-dried tomatoes and basil, caramelized onions, or whole cloves of roasted garlic.  Hungry yet?

Or maybe we're ready already to dive right into fruits & veggies as the center of a lighter first meal of the day.  When the weather is warm I want a smoothie: a handful or 2 of blueberries and a chopped nectarine (or local seasonal fruit of your choice), maybe spinach or kale, a frozen banana (if you've got one lurking in the freezer), a scoop of probiotic-rich yogurt or some coconut milk, a few dates or spoonful of local honey, a big pinch of local bee pollen, splash in some orange or apple juice, and  blend with 1/2 cup or so of ice.  Stir in chia or hemp seeds or top with granola for some crunch.

Lean and mean green drink more your speed?  Then you probably know how to make one.  They tend to be a bit too fibrous and, well, vegetal for me.  But I do like them quite a lot when made with fruit and strained through a colander (just kidding; how 'bout using a juicer?  But then we'd lose all that fiber...): berries, carrot, orange, apple, beet, and/or celery, maybe dates, lots of kale, some spinach or lettuces, and a little flat-leaf parsley (I guess I like my green drink less mean, and mildly sweet).

Of course there's a whole host of other options within a wide range of healthfulness: baked fruit crisp, fruit salad, sauteed greens, roasted potatoes, apple sauce (ok, maybe just for babies), fruit with granola and yogurt, vegetable-filled quiche...oh, and here's a novel idea: eat a fresh, beautiful, naked piece of fruit!

But if you are fortunate, and have time for a slow morning, I highly recommend a highly satisfying vegetable hash.  This is a "mother" recipe, readily adaptable to what's in your pantry and the changing seasons...

All-Veggies-In Hash                       Serves 4
1 pound potatoes (blue, Yukon or fingerling), cut into 1/2" cubes (or mixed root veggies of your choice: sweet potato, parsnip, beets, turnip, celery root, sunchoke..)
6 cloves garlic in their skins
olive oil (or sunflower oil, coconut oil, ghee...)
sea salt
1 small sweet onion, quartered and sliced thin (or red or yellow onion, shallots or leeks)
1 small crockneck squash, diced or sliced small & thin (or other seasonal veggie: carrot, fennel, broccoli, mushroom, winter squash, corn...)
1 large poblano chile, diced (or more seasonal veggies)
pepper

In a roasting pan or on a cookie sheet, toss potatoes and garlic with about 2 tablespoons of oil to coat, sprinkle with salt to taste and roast at 450 degrees for 45 minutes or so, stirring once about 20 minutes in, until golden and crispy.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized skillet or pan, caramelize the onions (cook slow & low, stirring frequently, until the color of caramel) on medium-low heat in 1-2 tablespoons oil and a pinch or 2 of salt.  Then add the other veggies and saute until soft.

Remove the skins from the garlic and toss all ingredients together with a few grinds of black pepper.

If you like, serve topped with shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream and a poached or fried egg.

Want to add more produce power?  Add fresh chopped parsley, cilantro, chives, tomato, avocado, salsa or hot sauce, or homemade fermented ketchup.  Want even more veggies?  Serve on a bed of sauteed kale, or fresh arugula, dandelion, cress or hardy mixed greens.

...and that was my breakfast this morning.