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fruit crisp!

It's summer in Texas! Summer means hot weather. Hot weather means not wanting to spend hours slaving over a hot stove. Conveniently, summer also means an abundance of cool, fresh fruits and veggies. Lovely, delectable things that require little to no cooking. (I've been really getting down with some fresh veggie sandwiches lately...)

Fruit crisps are some of my very favorite warm-weather desserts. The fruit is (hopefully) in season, the ingredients are few and the effort is minimal! But the reward is delicious...especially with a wee bite of cool vanilla ice cream or a dollop of fresh whipped cream. Wash and chop a few fruits, combine a few ingredients in a bowl, toss them all in the oven for a bit and voila! Scrumptious fruity dessert.

This recipe comes to me, and thus you, from my mom. One year in college, I asked for a blank recipe book for Christmas and asked family members to write down recipes for their favorite foods. This is one that my mom entered. It is rich and crumbly and very sweet - reduce the brown sugar a bit if you're not into that sort of thing or if your fruit is already quite sweet. Also, the recipe calls for cinnamon, but feel free to experiment with whatever spices your little hearts desire! The fruits are up to you too - in the past week I've made one with the last of the good apples for the season and another with the first of the blackberries and peaches!

Fruit Crisp

• 1/4 lb. butter (1 stick) - slightly softened and cut in pieces
• 3/4 cup oatmeal
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or spice of your choosing)
• about 3 cups fruit, give or take - washed, possibly peeled, and in bite-size pieces

Optional additions: raisins, chopped nuts, coconut, extra spices...

Preheat oven to 350°. Have ready an 8x8" or similar sized pan. Dump the fruit in the pan. (See? Easy.) If I'm using apples, I like to dust them with an extra sprinkle of cinnamon at this point. In a medium bowl, whisk together the oatmeal, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add the butter pieces and combine using a pastry blender or a fork until the mixture is crumbly. (The largest bits should be about the size of peas and most of it should resemble breadcrumbs.) Pour mixture over fruit and bake for about 35 minutes at 350°. Serve warm or cold, alone or with ice cream or whipped cream. Or serve with a bit of honey-sweetened Greek yogurt for an indulgent breakfast treat!

strawberry bread

If strawberry scones aren't quite your speed, maybe some delicious strawberry bread? (But seriously. If strawberry scones don't sound completely delicious to you, I'm not sure we can be friends.) With the first strawberries of the year in our Greenling box, we received a printout of a recipe for strawberry bread. "Strawberry bread?" I thought to myself. "Hm." I must admit that upon first inspection, it seemed a little odd. Banana bread, sure. Zucchini bread, of course. But strawberry bread? So I hesitated. But I was wrong to do so! After seeing a few tweets about how delicious it was, I made it myself. And boy was it tasty. But it was also chock full of oil and sugar and the recipe may have been halved at one point because it had the very odd requirement of 1 1/2 eggs. So I played with the recipe a bit and came up with a version that still holds on to the delicious flavors and moistness of the original, but with added whole wheat flour and less sugar and oil. The end result was definitely delicious and a whole lot healthier than the original!

Strawberry Bread

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced (about a cup)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a loaf pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a mixer, beat together the strawberries, vanilla, eggs, sugar, oil and applesauce. Gradually add the flour mixture to the strawberry mixture and beat until fully combined. Pour into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. For extra deliciousness, sprinkle powdered sugar on top of the loaf after it has cooled. Yum!

strawberry scones

I was going to blog about these scones. And then I forgot I was going to blog about the scones and started making plans to blog about these socks that I finished a few days ago. (They're swell.) But then I forgot to actually take photos of the socks and so here we are back at scones again! Which is really just fine, because these scones? Are delicious. I whipped them up Sunday morning before M was out of bed and would have loved to eat them all myself, but I refrained. At some point in the mid afternoon, I asked him if he'd tried them yet and he said they were the best he'd ever had. "Seriously?" I asked. His response? "Yeah. I've had three."

They're that good. They aren't your typical scone. When I think "scone," I all too often think of chalky, crumbly, somewhat dry, wedge-shaped, semi-sweet, but generally bland, concoctions. Maybe there's a currant or two tossed in. And maybe they've got that godawful sugary icing drizzled over the tops in little zigzags. (Am I the only one who hates that stuff? It's like they're trying to make up for the fact that they know the scones are dry and boring.) These are moist and flavorful and slightly sweet and slightly tart. They make use of the very first of the spring strawberries - somewhat tarter than I'm used to and oh, so fruity and wonderful! (My apologies to those of you in northern climes who are still anxiously awaiting anything resembling a fresh, local bit of fruit. You can gloat later in the summer when I'm frazzled and hot and my garden is yielding nothing but chili peppers.)

Strawberry Scones
adapted from the Joy of Cooking

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• slightly less than 1 pint of fresh, barely ripe strawberries, cut into small pieces - you don't want them to be overly ripe or they will get mushy when you try to mix them in

Preheat the oven to 425°. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add the cold butter and cut it in with a pastry blender (or your preferred method) until the largest pieces are about the size of peas and the rest look like breadcrumbs. Add the strawberries and toss them around so they get coated in the flour mixture. Whisk together the egg, heavy cream and vanilla and add all at once to the flour mixture. This is where things get messy! Stir in the wet ingredients just until the dry ingredients are moistened. I found that the easiest way to do that was to stir a bit with a wooden spoon or spatula and then just use my hands. The dough will not be firm enough to roll out but it will be a bit firmer than your average drop biscuit type dough. Pull off small chunks in the vicinity of, oh, about 1.5-2 inches in diameter? (I really should keep better track of these things!) Form them by hand (or use a spoon, if you're not down with getting a little messy) and place them on a cookie sheet several inches apart. I used parchment because I'm a little lazy about cleanup. Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack. I thought they were delicious on their own, but M said they were "mind blowing" with a bit of honey. You be the judge.

A side note, completely unrelated to scones: Whole Foods finally put up their own recap of the food blogger bash I wrote about last week and they're giving away a free goodie bag to one of the lucky commenters on this post over at the Whole Foods blog. It's a great goodie bag - I'm still munching my way through the pita chips, though most of the other delicious tidbits are long gone. So head over, if you're so inclined, and leave a comment before Friday, March 27 for a chance to win!

caramelized cabbage over egg noodles

I really didn't intend for there to be such a long gap between my last cabbage recipe and this one! It's just that this one? This completely unassuming, incredibly simple, peasant-like recipe? It's so good. It's so good that I've made it at least three or four times in the past month or two. And so I held off on posting the recipe because what if I made some drastic improvements to it? But I didn't. I just kept making it the same way because, really, why mess with perfection?

It's subtly sweet and somewhat savory, with a squishy yet hearty texture that's perfect for a cold, rainy evening. It's simple too - nothing more than a little chopping, occasional stirring, and boiling a pot of water for noodles. As if it didn't have enough virtues already - it's also cheap!

With mounds of cabbage slowly cooked with onions and apples, this meal is a caramelized vegetable delight. I was looking for something very simple that I could throw on after work and mostly ignore while I went about other business. I took inspiration from several word-of-mouth recipes, an old Romanian cookbook a coworker brought in, and a handful of Google searches. The end result is a winner, in my opinion!

Caramelized Cabbage over Egg Noodles

• 6 c. coarsely chopped cabbage
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 med. apple, peeled, cored and diced
• 4 T. butter
• egg noodles, for serving
• cottage cheese or sour cream (optional), for serving
• salt, to taste

Melt butter in a large heavy pot over medium high heat. Add cabbage, onion and apple and stir to coat with the butter. Continue cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When the cabbage and onions have started to cook down, you may need to stir more frequently. You want the mixture to become a nice brown color, but not burn. (There's a nice tutorial on how to caramelize onions here - the same general principles apply to this dish.) You will want to cook the mixture for anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, depending on how high your heat is and how caramelized you want your dish. Near the end of cooking, add salt to taste and cook some egg noodles according to the directions on the package. (We used a 12 oz. package and had some noodles left over after the cabbage was finally all devoured.)

To serve, place some egg noodles in a bowl, top with the cabbage mixture and a dollop of cottage cheese or sour cream. (Cottage cheese was my fave - M preferred the sour cream.) Delicious!

guacamole

If you've ever spent much time around me, you know I am head over heels in love with avocados. Thus, I strongly believe that guacamole is simply the most delicious chip topper ever! (I know there is a very vocal contingent of avocado haters out there - please don't rain on my parade. Just give me all your guacamole when we go out for Tex-Mex together!) Don't get me wrong, I love a good salsa as much as the next girl but in an either-or situation, I will choose the green goo any day.

And truthfully? I'm such an avocado lover that my favorite "guacamole" is simply mashed avocado with a bit of salt. But that doesn't make for much of a recipe now, does it? I have made guacamole many, many times since I first discovered the humble avocado. And I don't think any two batches were exactly the same. So this recipe is going to be more of a loose guideline than a strict blueprint for guacamole goodness.

Guacamole

• ripe avocados
• lime juice
• finely diced onion
• salt
• chopped fresh tomato
• finely diced fresh jalapeños
• finely minced garlic
• fresh cilantro

Peel and pit the avocados, taking care to use only perfectly ripe ones. Underripe avocados will only frustrate your mashing efforts and make a bland, flavorless concoction. Place them in a bowl and mash coarsely with a fork to desired consistency. Add small amounts of the remaining ingredients, tasting as you go. I regard them all as optional, except the salt, but I almost always include the diced onion and lime juice. For a two-avocado bowl of guacamole, I would say you won't need more than a few tablespoons (generally less) of any one ingredient, with the possible exception of the tomatoes, should you choose to include them. Just start with a small amount of each thing and keep adding until you like it! Serve with freshly made tortilla chips for a real treat!

This is all I really need...avocado and salt!

Coarsely mash the avocados until they are the consistency you like.

See that small section? I used about that much onion, maybe a bit less.

Onion added. (I could have diced it smaller...)

Added tomatoes!

The finishing touch - a dash of fresh lime juice!

I will be in Maine for the next week, and not entirely sure what my internet situation will be, so if I don't post for a while, never fear! I will be back. Also, if any of my adoring fans readers are in the Portland area and/or going to SPA in Freeport, come introduce yourself! I'll be awkward and shy but it'll be great. I promise.

"poached" eggs on a bed of spinach

I firmly believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If I go without breakfast, I feel sluggish and slow and then hungry way before lunch. Sometimes even quite nauseous. It's not pleasant! My go-to breakfast of late has been simple, relatively healthy and packed with nutrition. Plus, it's low on carbs which is great because I find that carbs, while immensely satisfying to eat, do not keep me filled up for long afterward.

This is only a recipe of sorts, since it's really so simple that I don't feel justified in deeming it a full-fledged recipe.

Here's what you do: Take a big bunch of spinach, wash it and shake it dry. Not an enormous amount of spinach, but more than you think. (Remember how small spinach gets when it's cooked? Yeah. That.) Now heat a tiny amount of olive oil in a large skillet and toss the spinach in. Stir it around until it starts shrinking and getting a bit wilty. Now break a few eggs straight into the pan onto the bed of spinach. (More or fewer, depending on how hungry you are and how many mouths you're cooking for.) I usually make a few little indentations in the spinach bed for the eggs to rest in. Now cover the pan (I use a clear lid so I can check the progress without opening it) and cook over medium-ish heat until the eggs are as cooked as you'd like them. If you're feeling crazy, sprinkle a little cheese over the whole thing. Add salt and pepper or other seasonings to taste. Serve! Sometimes I eat it with toast, sometimes I don't, depending on how carb-friendly I'm feeling that morning. It's amazingly quick, delicious and good for you!

homemade tortilla chips

I have to admit, I can't even take the credit for this one. It's all M's doing! One day we (oddly) had some leftover corn tortillas but no chips, so he made some! It's the easiest thing ever. OK, maybe not the easiest. I suppose opening a jumbo bag of Tostitos is a lot easier. But. But! These homemade tortilla chips are a thousand times better than any I've ever been able to buy in a store. They are more like the warm, delicious, freshly fried chips you get at cheap taco joints all over Texas than the cold, oddly textured Dorito-like things that most people eat. Even better is when they have big, flaky grains of salt adorning their jagged edges. I admit I did initially wonder whether they were going to be worth the extra effort but that first warm, salty, crispy taste quickly dispelled any doubts I had!

We used white corn tortillas for this batch. No particular brand. Soon, we're going to try making the actual tortillas from scratch. Hey, all it takes is two ingredients, one of which is water, so it can't be too hard, right?

Tortilla Chips

Cut small corn tortillas into wedges. Heat oil (we used peanut oil) in a large heavy pan until hot. (I took a peek at The Joy of Cooking after the fact, and they said 375°, if you're into numbers...) Add tortilla wedges in a single layer without crowding and fry until crisp and golden, flipping once. Remove to paper towels to drain. Swab some of that oil off, salt and enjoy! Look for my favorite chip topper recipe in the near future...

the first of many cabbage recipes

You may remember a little while back when I was soliciting cabbage recipes. I got some excellent suggestions and I'm really glad of that because judging from how much cabbage is still left, after cole slaw and a giant pot of soup, we're going to be eating cabbage for a very long time still! The first recipe I'd like to share with you is a cabbage soup. It seems like there are about as many recipes for cabbage soup as there are heads of cabbage in the world and I've made many of them. This one, while definitely tasty, is not my favorite but I'd still recommend it. Despite there being a huge amount of cabbage in it, the focus isn't on the cabbage. There are so many other things going on here that you could easily focus on something else entirely if cabbage isn't exactly your thing - the sweet and smoky sausage, the hearty white beans, the slightly thick tomato-y broth...

Cabbage and White Bean Soup with Sausage
adapted from Bon Appetit

• 4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 12 ounces fully cooked chicken-apple sausages (about 4), cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 6 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
• 3 leeks (white and pale green parts only), halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced crosswise (about 3 cups)
• 4 medium carrots, sliced
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
• 8 cups chicken broth
• 1 15-ounce can cannellini (white kidney beans), rinsed, drained

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in large heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add sausage and sauté until brown around edges, about 5 minutes. Add cabbage and sauté for a few minutes then transfer to a large bowl. Add remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil to same pot and heat over medium heat. Add leeks and carrots and sauté, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes. Add tomato paste, parsley, and stir for about a minute until everything is nicely combined. Add broth, sausage-cabbage mixture, and beans and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. This was delicious the night I made it, but possibly even better the next day or two. All told, I think this fed the two of us at least 4 or 5 meals each.

This is the cabbage still left:

crispy salted oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips

I have fond memories of some sort of butterscotch-chipped cookie baked by my grandmother. I remember eating them while playing with plastic horses in my grandparents' living room. Only one of the horses was actually a mule (who makes plastic mule toys?) and my grandfather would point it out every. single. time. It cracks me up now to think back on it. The late afternoon sunlight would reflect off the snow and stream through the picture window as I tried to minimize my cookie crumbs and gallop the plastic horses over their carpeted paddock in front of the Christmas tree.

These are not those cookies.

I don't know what cookies those were, though I suppose I could just call my grandmother and ask. (If she even remembers! They might have been only memorable to my 5-year-old self! Who knows?) But these cookies make a nice, sophisticated stand-in for now. I first saw them on everybody likes sandwiches, who got the recipe from smitten kitchen. Both of them used good white chocolate. Me? I love white chocolate. Love it. I really and truly do. And I'm sure these cookies are more than delicious with white chocolate. But with a bag of butterscotch chips burning a hole in my cabinet and the memory of those childhood cookies haunting me...what's a girl to do but surrender to the butterscotch gods?

Crispy Salted Oatmeal Cookies with Butterscotch Chips

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/4 t. salt
• 14 T. unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 6 oz. butterscotch chips
• 1/2 t. fancy salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and the 1/4 t. salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, beat together butter, sugar and brown sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Slowly add flour mixture and mix until just blended. Stir in oats and butterscotch.

Use a tablespoon measure to place dough on parchment-covered baking sheet. Press down on each ball to flatten slightly and sprinkle a bit of fancy salt on each cookie. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Makes about two dozen cookies.

apple-date coffeecake muffins

Very rarely do I make up a baking recipe from scratch. I modify and change, tweak and substitute, but that's about as far as it goes. With cooking, as opposed to baking, I always make things up from scratch! I'll use a recipe more as inspiration than actual instructions many times. A dash of this, a plop of that, stir some of that over there in this over here and voila! Dinner! Baking always seemed so complicated. So scientific. And I was too afraid to make mistakes. Because it's true - most baking differs from most cooking in that there really are certain scientific things that need to take place in order for the food item, whatever it may be, to come out alright. I guess I'm just getting to the point where I know what those things are!

This is all to say that I've finally made up my own recipe for a baked good. And oh what a baked good it is! I debated over the name. Is it a coffeecake? Is it a spice cake? Muffins? Mini muffins? Giant pan? Oh, the decisions! I went with muffins, though you can make it in just about any form you want - and I've tried most of them! I like muffins because they're good portion control. And with this cake, you might need it! It is rich, sweet and buttery with added moistness from the fruit and sour cream and just enough spice to keep me happy.

Baked in a 9x13 pan yesterday morning, we wrapped up half to store in the freezer for later and another little portion for the neighbor. And the other large piece? Let's just say that quick work was made of it...

And now, without further adieu...

Apple-Date Coffeecake Muffins

• 2 cups flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 t. ginger
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 4 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 apple, coarsely grated or finely chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped dates
• streusel topping, recipe below (optional, but delicious!)

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease your baking vessel of choosing - I've used a 9x13 pan, muffin cups and mini muffin cups.

In a large bowl, cream the brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ginger and cinnamon. In a second medium bowl, combine the eggs, sour cream, honey, applesauce and vanilla. Gradually add the wet and dry ingredients to the brown sugar and butter, stirring after each addition. Stir in the apples and dates. Pour into prepared pan and top with streusel topping. (Also delicious - pour half the batter into the pan, top with half the streusel, then repeat. Streusel filling! And topping! Yum.) Bake 9x13 pan for 45-55 minutes, muffins for about 26 minutes, and mini muffins for about 15. Cool and enjoy!

Streusel Topping
from the Joy of Cooking

• 2/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 5 T. melted butter
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. salt

Combine all ingredients.

The first time I made the streusel topping, it was perfect. The second time it seemed like there was too much butter and not enough dry stuff - I'd be curious to see what others have to say!