I enjoy cooking and baking, so even though many of you are dealing with food induced comas here is an offering of two recipes. The first is quick, healthy and excellent. The second is decadent and has a story. So let’s get the healthy one out of the way:
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Pomegranate and sweet potato salad
This is one where you can play with the ingredients and proportions to suit yourself. Use this as a guide and branch out. There is one simple trick - you’ll need a lot of pomegranate seeds. To extract them without ruining your shirt and making a general mess of the kitchen, fill a large bowl with cool water and break them apart under water. No mess and it is very easy to retrieve the seeds.
Two sweet potatoes cut into half to three quarter inch cubes. Roast at 350°F for 30 minutes.
base salad - the baked sweet potatoes plus:
1 cup pomegranate seeds
1/2 green apple thinly sliced
3 cups kale chopped and coated with a good olive oil
3 cups of cooked quinoa - I’m a big fan of quinoa and have a preference for Bob’s Red Mill
pesto
chop away in a food processor (it will be fairly liquify):
2 cups fresh mint leaves
2 tbl shallot
1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice (this is particularly good with blood oranges when they are in season)
1 tbl freshly squeezed lemon juice
a bit of cayenne (maybe 1/4 tsp)
a bit of salt (maybe 1/4 tsp)
Toss the sweet potatoes, quinoa, apples and pomegranate seeds. Plate and pour on the pesto.
mmmm - it is too healthy to be this good!
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There are times when a gift takes time to reveal its worth.
My parents had a very modest beginning. Their wedding was done on a shoe string without a church or a normal reception - the big present was a $10 wedding cake a few friends provided. One couple they knew only gave one thing - a recipe.
That couple was a German war bride and her GI husband. She was from a line of bakers and the couple had a dream of starting a their own bakery. Their gift was a brownie recipe. She said it was her favorite and “trust me - it will be useful to you some day..”
Its proportions are a bit different from the standard brownie recipes and it comes out of the oven a bit gooey and has to finish cooking in the pan. My mother has given the recipe to several people, but many don’t get the hang of it. WIth a bit of practice, though, it is remarkable.
We always had them for holidays and she would give them to my father when he had important business meetings. They always seemed to be appreciated.
I started making them as a teenager and , while working on my Ph.D. thesis experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, would bake a batch nearly every night selling them in the physics department before I was closed down as a bakery operating without a license. Afterwards I still got regular requests and my department developed a serious addiction - along with the particle physics theory group at BNL.
The real story can later when my father had bypass surgery. It may be that excessive brownie consumption played a part in this, but that would be the expected story wouldn't it?
His cardiologist prescribed several medications including one that was seriously expensive and something their insurance covered poorly. The first month of medication was given as a free sample by the heart surgeon as a courtesy and my mother responded how she always did - she baked a batch of brownies for the surgeon.
Now there is something of a disconnect here. Brownies aren’t exactly heart healthy food, but she was following her own well established protocol. After all, everyone loves brownies, right?
The brownies were a huge hit in the surgeon’s office.
A month after the surgery saw the first of a series of followup visits and my grateful parents brought another batch of brownies. The surgeon was thrilled and reciprocated with another month’s supply of medicine.
A machine had been set in motion ... it ran for years
They tried to track down their old friends only to find both had both died. But there had been a successful bakery and some children so the cycle was finished by telling them of their mother's prediction.
Make some if you are into brownies. Again - not heart healthy, but great stuff.
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Wedding gift brownies
preheat over to 325°F and grease a 9x13 inch baking pan
melt together the following over simmering (not boiling) water in a double boiler
3 squares of baking chocolate
3/4 cup butter
meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl beat 4 large eggs together lightly
Beat the melted mixture into the eggs using a rubber spatula to get all of the chocolate and to scrape down the sides.
add 1 tsp vanilla extract
In a separate bowl mix the following:
2 cups white sugar
1 cup sifted flour
3/4 chopped walnuts or pecans - more nuts don't hurt ..
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 tsp salt
add the dry mixture in portions to the liquid mixture and spread out evenly into the baking pan.
bake ... this usually takes 30 minutes or so. It is “done” when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean - more than that and you’ve gone too far. It needs to be a bit gooey.
place on a rack and allow to cool
Frosting
Melt one square of baking chocolate and 1/3 stick of butter in a double boiler. Add 1/4 cup evaporated milk and “enough” powdered sugar .. usually about a pound .. to get a smooth consistency. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.
notes:
I use only very fresh ingredients. Find a good vanilla extract. I make my own with vanilla beans that sit in a small bottle of rum for several months. The traditional chocolate is Hersey’s baking chocolate - the squares are an ounce. I use Lindt or Scharffen Berger 99% cocoa. I would love to try some Mast Brothers chocolate one day - their bar chocolate is the best I've had.
Playing around with the chocolate frosting is a good place to start experimenting. You might also try changing the fat. It gives a different, but also very good result, substituting vegetable shortening for the butter or using a 50-50 mixture of vegetable shortening and butter. All of these are unhealthy in large quantities, but experiment and find the version you like best. As an aside I strongly preferthe Toll House chocolate chip recipe substituting vegetable shortening for the butter.
An interesting variation is to not ice them, chill them in the fridge (but not the freezer) and cut them in half to make them thinner. Make a batch of home made ice cream and build up some amazingly rich ice cream sandwiches.
*really* good!
Some of you have wandered through this and are either left hungry or waiting for something interesting. For you here is an offering from a Jim Henson - we were lucky to have had his genius.
happy holidays!
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