Dark Days for one, blondies for an army

Sick of making cupcakes for every event I bring dessert to, I was looking for something a little more unique for my roommate's going away party a few weeks ago.  I had made these blondies a week prior, and they were pretty delicious, but I there was something missing.  Not missing, exactly, just... there to be improved upon.  I knew that I had to up the salt factor -- the perfect balance of salty-sweet is my holy grail for desserts -- and there just weren't enough chunks for me.  I needed more chunks!!



I whipped up a batch of home-made toffee and chopped that up into bite-sized pieces, and upped the vanilla in the recipe.  I needed the blondies to stay fudgy and not cake-y, so I also downed the cooking time just a little.  Definitely an improvement.  Such an improvement that this is the only photo I got of them after they went into the oven (apparently some party honorees think that they can break into dessert before dinner has even been served, because they're going to Africa and won't be back for ever!).



This refrigerator pasta was my dark days meal for the week.  I'm not used to cooking for just me, and since I learned to cook with my mum and godmother when they were prepping for big parties -- that's when my tiny hands were useful to them -- for a long time I could only cook meals that would feed me for months, or a Mongolian horde for a day.  And that was not a sustainable way for me to cook.  One of my major Dark-Days goals is to also waste less, so when thinking of what I could buy for my meal and finding myself too lazy to emerge from my house-cocoon, I looked in the freezer to find the motherload!

I had blanched and frozen local, organic zucchini and summer squash back when they were in season (why I must blanch them before freezing I am still not sure of, I just did it because the internet insisted I had to, and that was an argument with my computer that I wasn't going to win), and there were also some oven-dried tomatoes in there.  Not just any oven dried tomatoes though, oven dried, organic tomatoes, that I grew.  This wouldn't be such an accomplishment, since California summers are great for tomatoes, but we had an unseasonably cold summer, so my tomatoes stayed green along way into July, even though the plants had gone into the ground in April, and I didn't get more than 30 ripe tomatoes bigger than cherry sized.  When the first frost came my plants were covered in grapefruit sized, green tomatoes, ready to fall on the ground because of my benign neglect.

Anyway, I threw all of those things together with some organic canned tomatoes that I found in my cabinet, and was quite pleased by the delicious flavour the oven roasted tomatoes added.  Dried red peppers, plenty of salt and pepper, made for a wonderful dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch, I suspect).  No recipe for this one: putting together refrigerator pasta is not something to be proud of.

White Chocolate, Walnut, Toffee Blondies, adapted from The Country Cook on Tasty Kitchen
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
10 tbs unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extracts
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup toffee chunks

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Start browning butter on stovetop, keeping the butter over medium heat and stirring frequently.  Watch carefully, once the butter starts to brown, it will burn very quickly, so keep an eye on it.  While doing that, stir together your dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder), and beat the eggs.

Once butter is browned, mix with the sugar and allow to cool a bit.  Mix in the beaten eggs and vanilla, and when those are combined add the dry ingredients.  Your mixture will be pretty thick, but persevere!  Add your chunks (walnuts, chocolate chips, toffee, etc.) and spread the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan that you've sprayed liberally with non-stick spray (or oiled).

Bake 25-30 minutes.  Depending on how goopy you want them, you might undercook a little, like I did, or you can go the traditional route and just wait until a cake tester inserted in the blondies comes out clean.

Dark Days: White Bean Stew

I often see a recipe on one of the many food blogs I regularly follow and think, "oh! I should make that right now."  Generally I don't have the ingredients though, so sloth takes over until the next time I go to the grocery store because I'm very nearly out of food all together.  This doesn't usually apply to baking actually, because I tend to keep a basically fully-stocked pantry of non-perishable baking ingredients on hand.  So in that case, it's usually a lack of butter or eggs that holds me back.  These days, with an abundance of butter and eggs, it's been self control. I know, ridiculous.


So when I saw this white bean stew on Smitten Kitchen, I knew that it would make a perfect meals for my Dark Days challenge. Part of my self-challenge for Dark Days is getting more non-meat protein into my diet, so this meal looked like an easy and delicious way to do so.  I altered the recipe a little, starting with dried white navy beans, which I soaked overnight and threw in my trusty pressure cooker to cook up.  I put in 3 cups of liquid per cup of navy beans, which were the cooking recommendations that I found online, and threw in a sliced onion. Half of my liquid was actually vegetable stock, which I hoped there would be just enough left of to cook the stew with.





I declined to clean out my trusty pressure cooker after this and just threw in the garlic, since my onions had already been added in with the onions.  I also skipped the pre-cook of the chard, so after I had added my beans, tomatoes, and all the rest of the liquid, I put in the raw chard.  I served the stew with thick sliced, toasted bread that I had made using the King Arthur Flour no-knead bread recipe.  Incidentally, this bread has become a staple in my house, since one of my roommates loves it, and thus I get to keep making it every few days.





The stew was a huge hit with my roommates and myself.  Even the boy acceded that it was delicious, and he tends to be a meat-give-me-meat-in-my-food kinda guy.  I took Deb's tip and rubbed the toasted bread with garlic when serving the stew, and it was a great addition.  As the bread got all soaked in stew it really added a nice bite of garlic to the last few bites.





White Bean and Chard Stew, adapted from Smitten Kitchen
makes 6-ish servings


1 pound Swiss chard
1 cup chopped carrots (I left this out because I had taken all my carrots to my horse earlier that day)
3 stems chopped celery
1 medium onion, sliced or chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 cups cooked white beans (about 2 cans if you're using canned)
2 cups vegetable broth/leftover bean cooking liquid
1 28 oz. can tomatoes (I used whole, chopped them, and threw everything in the pot)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
pinch crushed red peppers
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar


Saute the onions, celery, carrots, and garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil.  Add drained white beans and allow to heat through for a moment, then add tomatoes, vegetable broth, and bay leaf.  Simmer for 20 minutes, and clean your chard leaves. To do so, cut the ribs and stems out of the chard leaves (I just aimed to cut out anything that looked tough), and give them a rough chop if you feel necessary.  Add the chard into the stew and mix it in thoroughly, taste test, and add salt, pepper, and crushed red peppers.  Allow to simmer another 10 minutes or so until the chard is wilted. Salt and pepper to taste if there's anything missing, and serve over thick toasted bread that you've rubbed with raw garlic.

Dark Days: Cauliflower Soup

I've really been flagging on my Dark Days Challenge meals.  Since the challenge started, I've only been in country for one week.  I was lucky enough to spend my holidays in Belize with my boyfriend, but it means that I didn't do any cooking.  I did, however, do lots of sustainable and organic eating, but there is no photodocumentation of this.  Why?  Well, basically every dinner I had in Belize was had in near darkness.  No joke, it was like romantic lighting taken to the furthest extreme -- we're talking so dark you can hardly tell what you're eating, and you hold the votive candles up to your menu to order.  Absolutely everything I ate was delicious though; whether it was from one of the many resort restaurants we ate at or a local eatery.



Of course, I did get the stomach flu half way through the trip, gloriously on a day that we were traveling.  This really decreased the number of new things I got to try over the next few days, but I did get over it, and was well enough before the end of the trip to resume eating.



Upon returning stateside I promptly ate a hamburger, then some fish tacos, and then I didn't feel so well.  So I decided that my first home-cooked meal for the new year would be something with vegetables, and why not make it a Dark Days challenge?  I also love cauliflower soup, so I turned to this recipe from Pioneer Woman, because who doesn't trust good old PW?  The only cauliflower that my co-op had was orange, so I went with it.  I also forgot to buy celery, and just went with that too.  I prefer a slightly chunky soup and was too lazy to cut my vegetables small, so I ran the soup through my food processor.  The resulting texture was perfect for me, small chunks, still chewable, but definitely soup.  However, some people might have described the resulting appearance or texture as resembling something they were seeing for the second time...



For a creamier texture, you might try using your immersion blender or regular blender (working carefully with the hot liquid, after all).  Want something that doesn't resemble orange goop?  Use white cauliflower and omit the carrots, then puree.  A smooth, creamy, pale cauliflower soup would be worthy of presentation.

Cauliflower Soup, adapted from The Pioneer Woman
servings: 4-6
For serving, a little bit of Parmesan cheese would not go amiss, but I didn't add any, and it is lightly salted and peppered so you can salt and pepper to taste as you serve it.  PW suggests serving over a cup of sour cream, and mixing that into the soup, which would be delicious.  I went for a slightly lower-calorie option, and found this soup to be filling and hearty, yet not too heavy.  Perfect for a winter lunch.

6 tbs butter
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 1/2 whole cauliflower heads, roughly chopped
2 tbs fresh parsley
1 quart vegetable broth
4 tbs flour
1 1/2 cups milk
3 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Sautee onions, celery, and carrot in 4 tbs of butter until translucent (or lightly browned, if that's your preference).  Add cauliflower heads to the pot, and allow to cook for 10 minutes.  Add parsley and vegetable broth, and simmer liquid for 20 minutes.

Melt 2 tbs butter in another saucepan.  Mix milk and flour in a small bowl or measuring cup, and pour it into the melted butter.  Allow this mixture to cook and thicken, then add to the vegetable soup mixture.  Simmer 15 to 20 minutes, and the resulting soup should thicken up.  At this point you can serve your soup, or puree it, simmer a little longer, and then serve.

Dark Days: Chicken and Dumplings

This year I'm participating in the Dark Days challenge, which, in short, challenges people to eat Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical (SOLE) food at least once a week throughout the Winter.  I'm participating in this challenge to help me evaluate how economical eating SOLE is as well as to raise my own awareness of the availability of SOLE food. As a graduate student I often consider myself too impoverished to actually eat ethically, but I've never actually evaluated this.  And I will admit, that living in California means that I really do have an easy time of eating SOLE.



My first meal was chicken and dumplings, which I shared with my roommates.  I was curious about how much sputtering the chicken thighs did when I was searing them, it burned me so!  In fact, this made me resent my chicken thighs a little, but in the end their deliciousness won me over.  I got local, organic leeks, celery, carrots, onions, and herbs from my local co-op. The chicken came from there also, and was definitely organic, but potentially just outside the local range.  I used stock I had previously made and canned, and my flour is local.  The milk was leftover from before I started the challenge so... I'm just going to say waste not on that one.



Not only is this meal delicious, but it's easy because you can use your crock pot.  The recipe I based it off of uses the oven, but I was going to be out all afternoon so threw all the ingredients in the crock pot on low.  I also took some liberties with the herbs, but that's what easy meals are for.



I can't actually think of an Australian analogue for chicken and dumplings. I guess chicken stew, which I would happily eat with bread or savory scones (biscuits), although biscuits aren't exactly popular in Australia. I would, of course, slather my bread with butter and use it to soak up the remaining juice at the bottom of my chicken stew.  Dumplings like this absorb the juices and leave you with both a thicker and slightly less juicy end product, which requires less sopping.



Of course, there was the creepy, circular floating fat on top of our bowls.  None of us was going to not eat the meal because of it, but after the leftovers were refrigerated I scraped the cooled fat off before reheating my next few meals.  In the future, I might take the skin off the chicken thighs before searing them.  Or afterwards (and upon second reading of the original recipe, this is what is suggested), since it is nice to have that reserved chicken fat to cook the vegetables in and add to the dumplings.  Either way, I'm going to go for a less fatty end product in the future.

Chicken and Dumplings, adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Stew
5 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken legs
1 tbs olive oil
2 leeks, white and light greens only, sliced into half-moons
1 large onion, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
6 tbs all purpose flour
1/4 cup dry sherry
3 cups chicken broth (or more to your desired consistency)
1/4 cup whole milk
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
1 tbs fresh rosemary, minched
3-4 leaves sage (I left them whole and pulled them out at the end with the bay leaves)
2 bay leaves

Dumplings
2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp table salt
1 cup whole milk
3 tbs reserved chicken fat (or butter, unsalted)

Heat a tablespoon or less of oil in a large dutch oven or skillet, and turn it to medium-high until the oil starts to smoke.  Throw in as many chicken legs as needed to cover the bottom of the dutch oven or skillet in a single layer and allow to sear and brown on each side, about 10 minutes total.  Do this in multiple batches if you have to (as I did).  Remove chicken and put it on a plate, and reserve the remaining chicken fat in the skillet/dutch oven (I poured mine into an old jar, the perfect receptacle for nuclear-hot fat).

Return your pot to the stove and lower the temperature to medium.  Add flour to make a roux, and allow to turn golden brown. Then add sherry to deglaze the pan, and let the mixture simmer and thicken (you may have to lower the stove temperature a bit).

While the roux/sherry is thickening, add your chopped vegetables and whole chicken thighs to the crock pot.  (I just threw them right in there without pulling off the skin, but I advise you to rip that skin right off.)  Add the chicken stock to your sherry mixture, and mix until it thickens a little.  Pour the juice over the chicken and vegetables in the crock pot.  Add your herbs of choice to the crock pot, put the lid on, and stick that baby on low for 4-6 hours.

30-ish minutes before you plan to eat, pull the chicken out of the crock pot and shred it. At this point you can either return it to the crock pot to keep warm, or reserve it to add back in after the dumplings are cooked.

At this time you should also make the dumplings. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt, and whisk. Add the milk and reserved chicken fat, and mix until a dough forms. Drop golf-ball sized (about a tablespoon) pats of dough into the crock pot liquid, make sure all are submerged, and turn the crock pot to high.  Put the lid on the crock pot and let the dumplings cook for at least 30 minutes. They should double in size and, if you want to check one, look cooked all the way through, without any raw dough left in the center.

Consume, enjoy.

(Upon second reading, this recipe seems surprisingly complex. It's not, really, but for some reason it just took a lot of words to convey it in all its delicious glory.)