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Summer Solstice Chocolate-Orange Zucchini Cake

19 Jun 2012

3 Comments

I came home from work last night in a terrible mood, so I locked myself in the kitchen. Baking always makes me feel better. It was wonderful to really concentrate on each step for a change, no rushing, no multi-tasking, no interruptions… just me in the quiet kitchen. Searching the fridge for inspiration turned up some slightly wizened zucchini, and I wanted chocolate. I remembered the Chocolate-Orange Zucchini Cake I made last summer. Not too sweet, light and moist, with an extra aromatic hit from the orange liqueur. This time I used the last little bit of my homemade kumquat liqueur.

The Summer Solstice is tonight and we’re right in the swing of zucchini season. Use up some of those cheap zucchini you can’t resist buying in this great bundt cake!

Chocolate-Orange Zucchini Bundt Cake

1/2 cup/1 stick butter
1/2 cup peanut oil
1 3/4 cups Florida natural unrefined or demerara sugar
1 tbl homemade citrus liqueur, triple sec, or vanilla
2 tsp grated orange peel
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 c pecan meal (can use almond flour or any finely ground nuts or seeds)
3/4 cup cocoa
3 cups shredded zucchini, squeezed dry

Preheat the oven to 325°F and butter a bundt pan.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, oil, sugar, liqueur, orange peel, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the sour cream, then dump in flours and cocoa powder. Beat until just mixed. Then stir in grated zucchini. Don’t overbeat!

Spread batter into the prepared bundt pan. Bake the cake for 45 minutes, then test with a skewer or toothpick. If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is done. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then flip bundt pan over a plate and let the cake cool completely before slicing. This cake really benefits from sitting for a few hours before serving!

If you can.

By: Andi Houston Category: Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Friday Night and Roasted Eggplant Dip

22 May 2012

4 Comments

Sometimes we get to Friday and there’s still a mountain of vegetables languishing in the fridge. The meal plan fell apart halfway through a very busy week, and while no one starved, neither did we eat much in the way of fresh vegetables. So Friday evening I hauled everything out of the fridge. The farmer’s market is Saturday morning. How was I going to use up all these vegetables?

 

Eggplant and peppers- Roasted Eggplant Dip
Yellow pattypan squashes and green onions- Stuffed Squash
White pattypan squashes- grated and bagged. Half went to a bundt cake, and the other half went to squash fritters.
Kale- my first successful kale chips!

I have been a teeny bit obsessed with this eggplant dip since the first time I made it a few weeks ago. I’ve made it three times since then, tweaking the recipe a little each time. It’s fantastic just slathered on bread, but it’s even better with a little goat cheese on crostini. For a really healthy snack, scoop it up with cucumber slices. Or you can just dig in with a spoon.

Make sure you keep this recipe aside for July, when eggplant and peppers are all you’ll find at the farmer’s markets. And don’t worry about finding the pomegranate molasses in Gainesville. Both the Indian grocer on NW 13th street and the one on SW 34th street carry it.

Roasted Eggplant Dip

3 Asian eggplants
1 or 2 red bell peppers
1/2 c whole pecans (1 handful)
1 clove fresh garlic
2 tbl pomegranate molasses
Salt & pepper
1/4 to 1/2 c olive oil

Turn your broiler on and let it get really hot. Place the whole eggplant and peppers on a roasting pan and place 4-6 inches from the broiler. Let broil until the pepper is blackened and blistered and the eggplant skin is brown and dull. Carefully flip the vegetables with long tongs and repeat until all sides of the vegetables are blackened, blistered and collapsed. Set vegetables aside to cool.

When they are cool enough to handle, carefully peel away the stems and skins of the eggplants and peppers and discard. Remove the pepper’s seed cavity and discard. Put the flesh of the peppers and eggplant in a blender.

Add the pecans, garlic, and pomegranate molasses to the blender. Then pulse the mixture until the vegetables start to break down if you can. Add 1/4 c of olive oil and pulse again until the mixture is smooth. If it’s not wet enough to puree, add another 1/4 c of olive oil or 1/4 c of water to the blender and pulse again until smooth. Add salt and pepper and pulse again.

Scrape into a container and taste. Add salt and pepper if needed. Refrigerate for at least an hour for the flavors to blend. Overnight is better.

Eat on everything!

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Blueberry Boy Bait… for Breakfast

15 May 2012

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Blueberry season is in full swing and we are taking full advantage of the bounty. I bought another 2 pints of blueberries at the farmer’s market on Saturday for pancakes, but pancakes never happened in our busy Mother’s Day weekend full of a cousin’s wedding, canoeing on the Santa Fe River, and giant family potlucks.

Last night I got the urge to bake a cake and remembered the blueberries in the fridge. I’m trying to limit my baking to reasonably healthy treats so I started searching for yogurt cakes using whole grain flours for breakfast. No luck. Most whole-grain cake recipes are also low-fat or use sugar substitutes, which we don’t use. So I took the recipe for one of my favorite summer cakes, Blueberry Boy Bait from Smitten Kitchen, and started making substitutions. And adding pecans, because what’s a breakfast cake without pecans? The final change was baking it in a cast iron skillet after finding that my cake pans are still at the other house!

Florida Blueberry Boy Bait… for Breakfast!

1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 c raw sugar
1 egg
1 c whole wheat flour
1 c gluten-free baking mix (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c whole-fat plain yogurt
1 c fresh blueberries, picked over for stems
1/2 c pecans, chopped
1/4 c cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 c whole-wheat flour
2 tbl raw sugar
2 tbl raw local honey

Heat oven to 350. Spray a 10-inch cast iron skillet with cooking spray, or use the paper from the butter to grease the skillet and flour it lightly.

Beat together the butter and sugar until the color lightens. Add the egg and beat until smooth. Dump the flours, baking powder, and salt in a pile in the middle of the bowl and combine the dry ingredients by lightly stirring them with a rubber spatula. Then add the yogurt and beat everything together just until fully combined. The batter will be very thick.

Scrape the batter into the cast iron skillet and smooth out. Then sprinkle the blueberries on top of the batter, then the chopped pecans on top of the blueberries. Then in the bowl that contained the batter combine the cold butter, flour, sugar and honey. Rub the ingredients together with your fingers until it forms clumps. Drop small clumps of this mixture evenly over the blueberries and pecans.

Bake at 350 for one hour. Test the center of the cake. When it comes out with no wet batter (blueberry juice doesn’t count!) then it’s done. Let cool to room temperature before serving, it will fall apart if served warm.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , , , ,

Eggplant and Zucchini Sabzi

1 May 2012

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Sunday was the Kickoff to the Eat Local Challenge month, run by Hogtown Homegrown and hosted by the Citizen’s Co-op. I was happily surprised with the number of people, the store and the small courtyard were packed with people the whole time I was there. There were definitely more vendors than I’ve ever seen there selling everything from goat milk to soap to herb plants. I hope everyone made lots of money. I was a bad blogger and forgot to take any photos at all, unfortunately, but I still want to post the recipe for the dish I made for my “Eat Local” cooking demo.

One of my favorite locavore challenges is finding great locally grown substitutes for exotic ingredients. Cashews and almonds are called for in many Indian dishes as a way to make a sauce rich and creamy without using dairy. Well, almonds and cashews don’t grow here in North Central Florida (much to my dismay) but pecans definitely do. So I was pleasantly surprised when a regular Indian stir-fried mixed vegetable recipe worked wonderfully using pecans instead of cashews.

This is a perfect spring/summer vegetable dish. It’s vegan and uses the vegetables we have in the greatest abundance in the summer: tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and eggplant. But sabzi is really a cooking method- the dish is how it’s cooked and the sauce, not necessarily what’s cooked in it. If you are swimming in okra, add okra. If you’re covered in green beans, try green beans alone or just add green beans to the mix. Great for cleaning out the crisper drawer!

Eggplant and Zucchini Sabzi

All bolded ingredients came from the 441 Farmer’s Market the day before.

1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1″ fresh ginger, minced or grated
2-3 tbl peanut or sunflower oil
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
2 very ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 handful of pecans
2 peppers, any kind
2 medium zucchini, in chunks
2 medium Japanese eggplant, or 1 Italian eggplant, in chunks
salt & pepper
1 large handful of cilantro
1 lemon

Heat 2 tbl oil in a large saute pan or frying pan to medium. Add onion and fry, stirring constantly, until the onion is translucent and starting to color. Add ginger and garlic, and keep stirring until the onion starts to turn deep brown. Add the coriander and garam masala and stir until the spices are very fragrant. Then add the peppers, zucchini and eggplant, a good sprinkle of salt and pepper, and let them all fry together. Add another teaspoon or so of oil if the mixture seems too dry.

Combine the tomatoes and pecans in a blender. Puree them together until the mixture is completely smooth.

When the eggplant, peppers and zucchini have just started to soften and color, and the rest of the mixture is nice and dark brown and caramelized, add the pureed tomatoes. If the mixture seems dry, add 1/4 c of water. Stir thoroughly, taste for salt, and then let simmer until the sauce darkens and you can smell the spices, about 10 minutes.

Add salt if necessary, and garnish with cilantro and freshly-squeezed lemon juice, or you can pass around wedges of lemon for each person to add to taste. Serve with achar, raita, steamed rice, or naan.

If you have the time, put the pecans in a small bowl of water the morning you plan to make this dish. The pecans absorb some of the water and the water also leaches out a little of the bitterness of the pecan skins, making a creamier and smoother dish.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Sunday Morning Pecan Waffles

8 Jan 2012

3 Comments

Big Sunday breakfasts are one of the meals I look forward to cooking the most all week, especially on busy weekends. And what a busy weekend this has been! We’ve been working on various “home improvement” projects all weekend. Sanding, painting, filling holes, and hammering in mails are all wonderful therapy after a frustrating week. The best part of course- crossing items off lists!

Strawberries, Chinese honey tangerine, wild hog breakfast sausage, pecan waffles with butter and honey. All local!

We are heading into the end of pecan season. Have you stocked up for the year? I have three pounds in the deep freezer and I’ll probably buy another pound. I have no idea how long pecans last in the freezer and I don’t know how many pounds of nuts we eat through the year but if I run out before pecan season starts up again in October I’ll keep track of how much I buy. Then in the fall I will know I need x pounds of pecans to last from season to season.

Pecans!

Sunday Morning Pecan Waffles

1 c whole wheat flour
1 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 c each coconut flour, besan/chickpea flour, and oat flour
1 tbl baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
4 eggs, preferably farm eggs!
1 c milk
2 tbl peanut oil or any other liquid fat
1 c water
1/2 c coarsely chopped pecans

Start heating your waffle iron. (Mine is ancient but still works perfectly. It has cast-iron plates and after so many years of regular use is perfectly seasoned and absolutely non-stick.)

Auracana eggs with crazy rich orange yolks.

Measure all dry ingredients into a bowl and stir until well-combined. Then add the wet ingredients to the dry and beat until you have a thick, smooth batter. Add water 1/4 cup at a time until the batter is the consistency you like. I prefer mine a little on the thin side so the waffles are very light. Thicker batter will produce denser waffles. Stir in the pecans. Grease your waffle iron if necessary. Then make the waffles according to the directions on your waffle iron, everyone’s is different.

It's so old the coils are uncovered underneath. You could probably toast marshmallows off them.

Variations- This recipe can also make pancakes if you don’t want to mess with a waffle iron. Please note that there is no sugar added to this waffle batter! My husband is diabetic so I don’t add sugar to anything I don’t have to, and since my kids add sugar to the outside of the waffles, we don’t need sugar on the inside of the waffles too. If you want sweeter waffles you can add a tablespoon or two of anything sweet. The coconut flour/besan/oat flour mixture is just what I happen to have in the house and added for extra protein and fiber, you can substitute any other combination of flours for this mixture or just another cup of whole wheat flour.

The kids like waffles with butter and jam, or butter and honey. I like waffle and sausage sandwiches!

By: Andi Houston Category: Recipes! Tags: ,

Deer pool and Flourless Orange Pecan Cake

9 Dec 2011

5 Comments

Yesterday I drove out to Crawford’s and picked up our venison. It must have been a smallish deer- there was only 40 pounds of meat. Small pools like that are easy- few shares need to be sold and the risk of loss is small. I hope there are more abandoned deer before the season is over, venison is rare and very popular. I enjoy venison more than beef in flavor and I like the sustainability. Venison is the ultimate in “free range and local” though I’m not sure we can claim any venison is organic. Deer invade commercial cropland as often as they can, so they do ingest pesticides and herbicides, even if they are never injected with antibiotics or hormones.

It will be so nice to have a break from pork! I’m already thinking about all the venison dishes I can make.  Wildbrauten! Venison en daube! Venison chili!

Tonight I made a cake I’ve been lusting after for months. Florida citrus just started showing up in stores last week from down south and I immediately bought two big bags of tangerines. This cake was originally made with oranges and almonds, I am using what’s in season right now- tangerines and pecans. The texture of this cake is almost souffle-like, very moist and intensely orange.

This recipe still needs some tweaking, but it's damn good just as it is.

Flourless Tangerine Pecan Cake

inspired by Citrus & Candy’s Flourless Orange Cake

4 tangerines
1 c sugar
1 1/2 c pecan flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
6 eggs

First take the whole tangerines and put them in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil for a minute, then drain the water and add fresh cold water. Bring back to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for an hour. Drain and let the tangerines cool.

Once the tangerines are cool, heat the oven to 350 and butter a 9″ cake pan. Cut each tangerine in half across the middle and carefully scoop out each seeds with your fingers or a small spoon. Put the de-seeded tangerines in a food processor.  Whirl in the food processor until chopped. Then add the eggs and sugar and whirl again until the pieces of orange peel are small and the mixture looks thoroughly combined. Then add the baking powder and pecan meal and whirl again until smooth. Pour into the cake pan and bake for 50 minutes. The top will puff slightly and may crack, and a skewer will come out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 20 minutes then turn out to cool entirely on a wire rack.

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Pecan Spice Cake- grain free and refined-sugar free

1 Dec 2011

4 Comments

I’m always experimenting with gluten-free, grain-free, Nourishing Traditions-inspired baking recipes using seasonal ingredients. Lately the ingredient of choice has been pecans. Despite the pecan shortage in Texas, our area received just enough rain for a good pecan harvest and there have been a few weeks now of nice fat pecans at the farmer’s market for about $7 a pound.  I’m hoping to stock up with several pounds this weekend.

Many grain-free recipes call for almond meal, which is expensive and no almonds grow anywhere near here that I know of. Well a nut is basically a nut, so why not substitute? South Georgia Pecan Company located in Valdosta, Georgia makes fine pecan meal, ground about the same fineness as almond meal. So far the only place in Gainesville that sells it is Publix, but you can always make your own pecan meal by carefully grinding frozen pecans until finely ground, stopping before they turn into butter.

Pecan meal- cheaper than almond meal, and pecans are better than almonds anyway. So there.

Tonight’s experiment was advertised as gingerbread, but a cake containing no molasses cannot rightfully be called gingerbread, and I fiddled with the original recipe anyway, so I’m changing the name to something closer to what I actually ended up with. You can substitute any liquid sugar for the honey: try sorghum molasses, cane syrup, maple syrup, agave nectar, or any combination thereof. The nuts can be substituted too. If walnuts grow near you, try walnuts. If you’re up North, try hazelnuts.

The honey I used here is Lynn & Jackie Herring's Gallberry & Palmetto honey, which is darker than orange blossom but much lighter than wildflower. I wouldn't use a dark honey in this recipe unless you really love the throat-catching sweetness of dark honey.

Pecan Spice Cake
inspired by Anja’s Food for Thought’s Gingerbread Bundt Cake

1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup pecan meal
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

3 eggs
1/2 cup honey
1/3 c butter, melted
3/4 c coconut milk
1 tsp frangelico or any liqueur

Heat the oven to 350. Butter a 9×9 cake pan. Whisk the wet ingredients together in one bowl until combined. Then in a separate bowl combine all of the dry ingredients. Coconut flour tends to clump up, so keep stirring until the mixture is completely combined. Then stir the wet ingredients into the dry until smooth and no lumps. Pour the batter into the pan and bake just until the edges are lightly browned and a skewer comes out dry, about 45 minutes.

See the slightly sunken center? This cake is just barely undercooked. I think with this cake it's better to slightly overbake than slightly underbake. This is an extremely moist cake and can take being slightly overbaked.

By: Andi Houston Category: Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Thanksgiving harvest and Pecan Moonshine Bars

25 Nov 2011

5 Comments

I dug up the entire side of the bed looking for any missing sweet potatoes.

I had this wonderful plan that I was going to harvest the sweet potatoes I have been lovingly tending for six months and cook them for Thanksgiving dinner. Boy am I glad I waited until after I pulled them out of the ground before telling my mother-in-law not to buy sweet potatoes.

How shall I cook them?

Can you see the black spots? That’s further evidence of nematodes. I guess I should be happy I got any of edible size at all. We brought them with us for Thanksgiving but I haven’t cooked them yet. I want to find a way to really honor those tiny sweet potatoes, the first sweet potatoes I have ever grown.

This year I convinced my mother-in-law to let me bring the desserts. I had baked a beautiful Seminole pumpkin on Saturday for two or three pumpkin pies, but the puree soured in the fridge sometime between Saturday and Wednesday evening. Apparently fresh pumpkin puree has to be used immediately or frozen, it just doesn’t keep very long. (Thank you Stefanie Hamblen for telling me, it’s not a mistake I’ll make again.) So the homemade pumpkin pies ended up coming from Publix, but I did make some really incredible Pecan Bars.

Pecans just came into season here a few weeks ago, and I’ve already bought three pounds and only have a half of one baggie left. I LOVE pecans. Last year I didn’t buy nearly enough. This year I’m going to buy at least a pound every time I go to the market, and then hopefully stock the freezer before they disappear again.

Pecan Moonshine Bars

Based on this recipe from Baking Without a Box

Alachua County Pecans... $7 a pound at the 441 Farmer's Market

3/4 c atta, or whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 c jaggery or any raw sugar
1/2 c pecan meal or finely chopped pecans
6 tbl cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Heat oven to 350. Pulse this in the food processor until it’s like sand. Press the crumbs into the bottom and bake for 20 minutes or until barely golden brown.

4 tbl butter, melted
1/2 c jaggery or other raw sugar
1/3 c unrefined cane syrup, honey, maple syrup or agave (I used half honey and half cane syrup)
2 tbl Midnight Moon “apple pie” moonshine or any other liquor you have, like bourbon or rum
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
2 c pecans, picked over for shells and coarsely chopped

Combine the butter through the egg and whisk in a bowl until completely combined. Stir in the pecans, then pour the filling over the hot crust and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the edges have just begun to brown. Check frequently, these can go from golden to burned very quickly.

Big fat pecans!

These need to be served from the pan since the pecan sandie-like crust is very crumbly. These were a little too sweet for my taste, especially the base layer, but I love the strong toasted-pecan flavor and the hint of cinnamon from the moonshine.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Recipes! Tags: , , , , ,