A long day today, starting with 5 batches of whole wheat and olive oil scones for the volunteers at a Habitat for Humanity build, and ending with a stint as traffic reporter on the Homestretch (CBC Radio One), which always means I don’t get home until around 6:30. I planned to pick up some sour cream for peroghies but once in the car lacked the gumption. We ate frozen spinach pizza instead. (There is this President’s Choice Chicago-style deep dish pizza that has a ton of spinach on it, then a small amount of mild, chewy mozzarella, topped with tomato sauce. It’s the least greasy pizza I know, and W will eat a ton of it despite the thick layer of green stuff. Tonight a handful of raisins made a surprise appearance thanks to W.)
However. I did get some requests from volunteers for the recipe for the scones we had at coffee break, and I am just too happy to oblige. After all, they did account for a large chunk of my caloric intake for the day. (Quality control is important.) You know those little packets of coarse Sugar in the Raw? They are perfect for sprinkling over the top of your scones before you bake them. One packet is enough for one batch.
Whole Wheat & Olive Oil Berry Biscuits
These would do well with some grated lemon or orange zest, or leave out the sugar and add 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese for cheese scones.
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. sugar (optional)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive or canola oil
3/4 cup milk or buttermilk
1 cup fresh or frozen berries (don’t thaw them)
Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.
Put the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a food processor or into a medium mixing bowl and pulse or stir until well blended. Add the butter and oil and pulse or stir with a wire whisk or fork until crumbly. If you’re using a food processor, transfer the mixture to a medium bowl.
Add the milk and berries and stir gently just until the dough is combined.
Pat the dough into a circle that is about 1” thick and 8”-9” in diameter on the cookie sheet. (If they are sweet and you want a brown, crunchy top, brush them with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar.) Cut the circle into 8 wedges with a knife or pastry cutter and separate them on the sheet so that they are at least an inch apart.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden. Serve warm. Wrap well and freeze any you don’t eat the same day. Makes 8 biscuits.
One Year Ago: Roasted Squash & Ricotta Ravioli and Brown Sugar Shortbread
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April 03 2009 | bread and breakfast | 52 Comments »
My peroghies keep getting put off. Today I had no sour cream. And really, there’s no point.
But I did have two pints of cherry tomatoes (am growing weary of the grape and strawberry tomato and reverting back to the classic cherry) that I bought at the market last weekend with the intention of roasting. Would have made good pasta sauce, but for some reason the idea of a vegetable cobbler popped back into my head – something I made with chard years ago. So I drizzled them (and a few cloves of garlic) with olive oil, roasted them until dark and sticky, dropped spoonfuls of cornbread batter on top and baked it. It was good enough. Worked as a late lunch-early dinner before going out to First Thursday at Art Central and the Spoken Word Festival at the Auburn Saloon. (Seriously – SEVENTY dollars for a babysitter when we were home at barely eleven? Is that really the going rate these days? Am I that severely out of touch? Babysitting pays a helluva lot more than food blogging.)
Next time I might add a bit of cheese to the drop biscuits, or crumble some among the roasted tomatoes before spooning the dough on top.
Garlicky Cherry Tomato Cobbler with Cornbread Biscuits
2 pints cherry tomatoes (or grape)
3-4 garlic cloves, peeled
a good drizzle of olive or canola oil
Salt & pepper
Biscuits:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled and cut into bits
1/2 cup low fat sour cream or yogurt
1/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Spread out the tomatoes and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Roll the tomatoes around with your hands to coat them. Roast for half an hour, or until they release some of their juices and start to darken. Scrape the lot into a baking dish.
To make the biscuits combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the butter and blend with a pastry cutter, whisk, fork or your fingers until the mixture is well blended and crumbly. Add the sour cream and milk and stir just until you have a soft dough. Drop the dough in large spoonfuls or shape into rough biscuits with your hands and place on top of the tomatoes.
Bake for 40 minutes, until the biscuits are golden. Serves 4-6.
One Year Ago: Curried Chicken Fried Rice
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April 02 2009 | veg | 12 Comments »
When I think back to the dinners of my childhood, I’m sorry to say (Mom, especially if you’re reading this), that mostly the bad ones stand out. As a kid I was just as food obsessed as I am now, but with little control over what I had access to, and virtually none when it came to dinnertime. It was a bad day when I came home to fish for dinner. Served, in my memory at least, with warmed stewed tomatoes with little green bits in small glass cups that were probably very stylish in the 70s. Beef stew ran a close second – I still have it in my head that I’m not a fan, and am always surprised when I enjoy it – typically made with lean flank steak that had the texture of rope and got wedged in my teeth. I called it beef gum, because it gave such a good, long chew. Beef chaw, if you will.
But there is one exception: hash. Strangely enough I have no recollection of my mom making roast beef dinners, but she must have in order to use up the leftover meat and potatoes to make hash. It was finely chopped – in a meat grinder, even? – with some onion, I think, and then flattened like a pancake in our electric frying pan until it got good and crispy around the edges. I don’t think it was structurally sound enough to be cut into wedges, so it was served up as a sort of meat scramble, with lots of crispy bits interspersed throughout, and doused with ketchup. I loved it.
So I (may have mentioned the dogsitting?) found a note on A’s kitchen counter, left before heading to Mexico, that there was leftover steak and potatoes in the fridge. {Flashback to teenagehood and babysitting – finding a note to help yourself to the chips and pop – jackpot!} A couple chunks of steak and a container of roasted potatoes, with remnants of onion clinging to them. Hmm. My first instinct was to rush home and try my hand at hash.
I have eaten relatively well this week. But I think that this dish of hash beat them all – lobster gnocchi included. It brought me right back to the dinner table of my youth – long and wooden with benches, not chairs – like that scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego gets sucked through the wormhole into his French country kitchen with a scraped knee.
The thing about hash is you can’t start with raw ingredients – it must be fashioned out of leftovers. Chop the meat and potatoes up fine – a food processor works well, just don’t turn it into paste – and cook it in a hot skillet with a bit of oil. When the bottom is looking dark attempt to flip it – it will crumble apart and then you can just move it around in the pan until it’s heated through, and serve hot, with ketchup. (Eat the ketchupy bits off the top, add more, repeat.)
I think I will go ahead and commit to going back to the daily posts for the month of April. I miss that pressure of having to report every day. (And I’m getting off the hook too easily on those oatmeal-yogurt-reheated Tim’s nights.)
One Year Ago: Banana Bread with Peanut Butter (and just look how adorable W was!)
April 01 2009 | beef | 19 Comments »
