Vegan Blackberry Ginger Ice Cream

Blackberry Ginger Ice Cream Recipe

Yields 6-7 cups

2 13.66 oz cans or 3 1/2 cups coconut milk

1/2 cup minced fresh ginger

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons arrowroot

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

1 cup frozen blackberries

2 tablespoons kumquat or other tart marmalade (alternatively, use any jam and a splash of lemon juice)

2 tablespoons agave nectar

Bring all but 1/4 cup of the coconut milk to a simmer.  Add the fresh ginger and sugar to the hot coconut milk and let it steep for half of an hour.  Add the arrowroot to the 1/4 cup of coconut milk that you left out.

Heat the berries until their skins begin to burst open.  Use the back of a spoon to push them through a strainer to remove the seeds and hairs.  Heat the strained berry juice, jam and agave just until jam disintegrates.

Strain the fresh ginger out of the sweetened coconut milk.  Mixture should be room temperature.

Add it to your ice cream maker.  After about 45 minutes, add crystallized ginger and all but 1/4 cup of thickened blackberry sauce.  (That is how long my machine takes.  You want to add the goodies just a few minutes before you remove the mixture from the ice cream maker.)  Remove from the ice cream maker while the mixture is still streaky and before it homogenizes into a purple haze.  Freeze in an airtight container for at least two hours before serving.

But we still like to entertain and last week we invited a couple of friends to join our building’s rooftop party on the 4th of July.  This is no ordinary rooftop (and they are no ordinary friends).  This rooftop has a clear view of the Hudson River and all six of the Macy’s barges and the coast of New Jersey.  I needed something that could be made before I went to work and served immediately after I arrived home that would complement our excitement over what was sure to be an amazing fireworks show.

So I opened the cupboards and the fridge and the freezer and decided to make blackberry ginger ice cream and shortcake with strawberries.  Red, white and purple.  Close enough.

It was surprisingly good.  Astoundingly good.  This flavor wouldn’t catch my eye behind the heavy glass doors in the freezer section but I have pushed the leftovers on half a dozen visitors since our 4th of July celebration.  (I had to hold my husband back during this process.  He called dibs on the last two tablespoons.  And two tablespoons are all that remains.)

Cooling the mixture between steps takes more time than the active measuring and stirring.  The first part of this recipe makes a great ice cream base and then you can mix in whatever you have in your cupboards.

I owe it all to the amazing kumquat marmalade that Susan and William of House of Brinson gifted to me. (I finally found an occasion special enough to warrant breaking it open.  I’m secretly a hoarder.)  It lent an intriguing acidity and juice-thickening pectin to my strained blackberries.  You may owe it all to your homemade coconut milk or berries plucked from the one branch that hangs into your yard from your neighbor’s thicket.

Okay, I also owe more of it all to A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise.  This blog is written by a lovely young woman who is now on A Journey Toward Wellness after being diagnosed with Lyme Disease.  (I actually think about her every time that I eat ice cream because she disappeared for the longest time and now she is back and blogging and I’m wishing and hoping for the day when she posts that everything is mostly all better.)

Click here for my Vegan Blackberry Ginger Ice Cream recipe.

Anniversary Salad

It turns out that my husband and I are leaving town for ten days tomorrow.  I suppose I’ve known this since we booked the tickets a responsible amount of time ago but I still feel surprised and unprepared.  So this morning I woke up irresponsibly early and made a few things to take with us to ease the transition from home and projects in motion to on the road and constant motion.

I’ve worked in the unphoned and nonwirelessed kitchen for the past ten days straight and haven’t let anyone know that we are coming and excited and look forward to spending time together.  I’m too exhausted to look at a screen when I get home and I can’t imagine talking after a long shift of being focused and attentive.  I sound like a bore, and I sometimes am, but I love my jobs.

The process of making this salad before the sun had a chance to light up the skyscrapers from below and before the full moon resigned to waning made me forget the cuts and aches that come with kitchen work.  The cross-section of a red cabbage is always thrilling and I let myself imagine the stroll that I’ll be taking through the farmers market in the sunshine.  Dicing shallots, fennel and celery is now a meditative rather than a tedious act and I imagined what a gift it will be to spend Easter with my parents.  We usually celebrate holidays as a couple, thinking of family but not with them.  And as I mixed and tasted and noted this recipe for you, I thought about spending time with my brother and sister in law at my cousin’s wedding, just days after my husband and I celebrate our two year anniversary.

And after an hour or so of fussing around the kitchen I had two tidy containers, one of farro salad and one of pressed salad, to take with us on our trip tomorrow.  To be served together in whichever ratio we desire as we soar out of the day to day.  Just like family, these salads are both good on their own, but superb together.

Anniversary Salad

Serves 4-6

Farro Salad

5 cups cooked, cooled farro (1 1/2 cups dry), it should be chewy and the grains should be separate

1/2 cup fennel bulb, small dice

1/2 cup celery stalk, small dice

1/2 cup red onion, small dice

2 tablespoons ume plum vinegar

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon extra virgin cold pressed olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

1. Toss red onion with ume plum vinegar.  Let sit for 30 minutes.
2. Strain red onions and mix with farro, fennel and celery.
3. Mix red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper to make a vinaigrette.  Dress farro right before serving.

Pressed Salad

1/2 head red cabbage, chiffonaded

3 beets, grated or cut into strings on a spiralizer

1/2 cup dried currents

1 tablespoon Celtic sea salt

1. Toss cabbage, beets, currents and sea salt together in a large bowl.  Massage together for a couple of minutes until vegetables begin to get a bit limp.  Wear a glove or use a plastic bag as protection against dyeing your hand pink if you have somewhere to be or want to touch anything white for the next couple of hours.
2. Mound your salad in the center of the bowl, place something round that fits both over your salad and far enough inside of the bowl so that it can settle down over your salad as it begins to release liquid and decrease in size.  I use a stainless steel bowl, a small plate (then a saucer once my salad shrinks down into the bowl) and a large canned something to press the salad.
3. Let it press for at least 30 minutes; an hour is ideal.

3/4 cup walnuts, toasted

I find that this dish is best eaten out of a bowl.  Since the farro still has some chew to it, as opposed to being cooked until it’s creamy, you will just end up making fuchsia trails around your plate as you try to scoop up the grains.  These recipes yield equal amounts of farro and pressed salad.  Serve equal amounts and garnish with toasted walnuts.

Diced Fennel, Celery and Red Onion

The good news was that the streets of Antigua were ours…for the next six hours until our room was ready.  I remember the painful brightness of the morning light to our sleepy eyes and the deep shadows that it cast.  And the stillness of a city still sleeping.  We wanted a steaming mug of café con leche and maybe even a desayuno chapin, the typical Guatemalan breakfast of fresh corn tortillas, eggs, creamy paste-y black beans, avocado and fresh fruit.  We would have even settled for a couch to sleep off the nausea of a restless night and an empty belly.  Or a sink to freshen up a bit.  But we couldn’t find either.  We wandered past arches and towers, over more brick-lined streets and moved from dead tired into a sleepless euphoria.

The smell hit us as we turned another corner through Antigua’s narrow streets.  It was coffee and tortillas and something chocolate all at once and we immediately thought to brush our teeth in order to fully enjoy whatever was next.  We tripped up to the breezeway leading to breakfast and saw the sign for The Antigua Cooking School.  I was giddy.  They were kind.  My friend and I took turns freshening up and found out that their next cooking class was starting in a few minutes and they had one spot remaining.  I took it and my friend took off to find a massage table on which to rest her bones.

I was in the class with two khaki-ed gentleman from DC whose job titles impressed me.  I was still in the clothes that I had thrown on to tour the pyramids after a cold shower in yesterday’s hostel.  I still have the notes and recipes from that class.  The three of us stood in a row at a narrow table in matching aprons and watched our instructor make frijoles three different ways, pepian colorado, tortillas, rosa de jamaica and dulce de güisquil.  (Here’s my version of the chocolate chayote squash pudding made from an abundance of zucchini.)  My instructor’s accent and the smells coming the stove were familiar enough that in my haze I kept slipping between the kitchen in Antigua and that of my Mexican grandmother.

My grandmother was a great cook, but I don’t remember her making pudding.  We were told that traditionally the chayote squash pudding was thickened with crushed champurradas, a Guatemalan sugar cookie.  And this is where the mystery began.  During her demonstration, our instructor added a bag of pre-crushed cookies to the pudding as it thickened on the stovetop.  I was hooked on the idea of a corn flour-based sugar cookie and kept repeating champurrada to myself to see I could get more “purr” in my double r’s.

When I got back to the US, I moved a couple of times and started a new career and continued my search for the champurrada.  I finally realized that what I needed couldn’t be bought and I started looking for recipes online.  I found two pictures and three recipes in Spanish of my mystery cookie and I began to build a recipe from there.  I swapped coconut oil for lard and whole wheat pastry flour for all purpose and unrefined for white sugar.

And since Melissa Clark of the New York Times has given permission to the masses to fall back in love with coconut oil, I decided to share the recipe with you.  Champurradas are thin, crispy cookies with the savory crumble of corn flour.  I used plastic wrap (my grandma used a Wonder bread bag) and a rolling pin to make them as thin as the corn tortillas in my memory but they are also delicious just rolled into balls and baked.

A stack of thin, crispy champurradas

You’re going to love these cookies.  The last thing you’ll want to do is crush them and add them to a pudding.  Even chocolate pudding with zucchini in the spirit of Guatemala.

Champurradas (Guatemalan Crispy Corn Cookies)

Yield: 3 dozen cookies

3 tablespoons ground flax seeds

¾ cup coconut oil, softened but not melted (I like Nutiva Organic Extra Virgin)

1 cup unrefined cane sugar

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup masa harina (corn flour)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

½ cup brown sesame seeds

1)   Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or lightly coat with cooking spray.  Fold a 12-inch-long piece of plastic wrap in half and reserve.

2) Mix ground flax seed with six tablespoons of water in a small bowl.

3)   Sift flours, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl.  Set aside.  Beat coconut oil and sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until creamy.   Add the flour mixture in thirds.  After each addition, incorporate one third of the combined flax seed and water.  Mixture will appear pebbly.  Sprinkle in up to ½ cup water and stir with spatula until soft dough forms.

3)   Pinch off a small piece of the dough and roll into a 1 1/2” ball with hands.  Place the ball between the sheets of plastic wrap and lightly roll out to a 4” circle.

4)   Transfer circle to baking sheet and sprinkle with sesame seeds.  Alternately, roll ball of dough in sesame seeds and place on baking sheet.  Bake for 12-14 minutes or until edges are golden brown.  Serve warm or cool on wire racks.

The champurrada is also delicious in its pre-rolled ball form

Rooftop footprints on fresh snow

Millions are seeking

Last night was scary.  I left a message for my brother-in-law (a real live meteorologist and The Rapping Weatherman) at 9:47pm.  It went something like this: Okay, so I’m sitting in the dark in our apartment on the 46th floor and nothing but a white-green glow is revealed by our floor-to-ceiling windows and there are there flashes of bright white light every so often that look like lightning but Google has nothing to say about lightning in a snowstorm.

I really thought that we were under attack by aliens or a misguided blimp or something.  And I thought about the quest for pleasure and peace and how I owed my friend Devora a poem.

This morning I looked out the window and saw just one taxi on a white-gray street and the footprints that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Once I read that there had been no misdirected aliens or blimps and unclenched my fists despite my very bad burns and melted fingerprints from yesterday’s hot pot, I made soup.  Anonymous soup.

And aren’t most soups anonymous?  Your soup would be different than mine even if I was exceptionally meticulous in writing out all of the steps that I take to make my soup and you were extraordinarily exacting in following those steps.  That is fine and even preferable.  You know how you like your soup and sometimes you want to learn new soup tricks from recipes and sometimes you just want your soup the way you make it.  This is the way I make mine.  My soup is a collection of experience, common sense and reminders from good chefs  It also provides a temporary antidote to rooftop seeking.

Anonymous Soup

Makes enough for two lunches

Put a medium saucepan on the stove.  A medium saucepan will make enough soup for another lunch but doesn’t commit you to a full week of eating the same thing.  Put in a bit of extra virgin olive oil and start heating it on a medium high heat.  Cut an onion in a small dice.  Try to cut it faster than the last one you cut.  By the time the onion is cut, the oil will be hot.  Add the onion to the pan.  Shake the pan.  Salt the onions.  Peel and mince several cloves of garlic.  Try to mince them finer than you did last time.  Add to onions.  Shake the pan.

Consider the spices.  Grind them if necessary.  Scoot your onions and garlic over to the side of your saucepan.  Add the spices to the cleared side.  Add a bit of oil to them if necessary.  Move them around a bit until they have bloomed and your stomach takes notice.  Mix the pot and add water for four or five bowls of soup.  Turn your flame to high.

Add some beans.  Lentils are nice because they don’t have to be soaked.  French (or Puy or green) lentils keep their shape and have a firm texture.  So do the yellow ones.  Red and white lentils give up pretty quickly and give you a smooth (as opposed to chunky) bowl of soup.  Aduki beans, black soybeans and black-eyed peas also let you skip the soaking.

Look for some roots.  They stand up well to simmering and reheating and also have a grounding energy.  That’s one of the things that I’m looking for at the bottom of a bowl of soup.  Yams add an appealing brightness and parsnips add sweetness.  Celeriac has all of the flavor of celery without the strings and washed-out color that celery gets when it sits in soup.  Rutabaga stays firm and has a faint horseradish flavor.  Daikon is a watery root and brings a earthy pungent flavor to your broth.  Cut them into chunks of a size and shape that will please your mouth, turn down your heat to a simmer and add them to the soup.

Start some grains.  I like to add my grains after the fact.  I’ve had the grains take over my soup too many times and next thing I know I’m adding more water and my broth has lost its vigor and then I’m transferring the whole mess to a larger pot and I’m left with a week’s worth of soup that is so far from my original desire that I’m not even hungry for it.  I use the pasta method to make all of my grains.  (But you can consult with this excellent resource from Cook’s Illustrated to choose the best method for your grains if you’d like.  It includes the pasta method.)

Let the soup simmer for twenty minutes or so.  Taste it and salt it and let it simmer or sit for a bit depending on how soft you like everything.  Find your favorite bowl and spoon.

Finely chop some greens if you’d like and put them at the bottom of your bowl so that the hot soup wilts them a bit.  Some soups benefit from a squeeze of lemon or other acid here.  Now serve yourself a hot bowl of nice soup.  Spoon in grains to your liking.

Sit down.  Taste it.  Really taste it and think about the combination of flavors and textures and how nuanced your broth is and savor that.  It’s the savoring that satiates your cravings.

These Muffins Are Ready for the Oven in Half a Cup of Coffee

I hopped on the gluten-free train a couple of years ago when we were living in super-trendy and health-conscious Santa Monica, California.  I didn’t think that I had Celiac disease but I was pretty excited about experimenting with all sorts of new flours.  (Okay, I thought that I had Celiac’s for a minute but it was just discomfort from a parasitic stowaway from my Central America travels.)  Prior to these travels, I had been making my breads and baked goods with 100% rye and whole wheat and I was ready to incorporate the quinoa, millet and sorghum flours that lined the sun-filled shelves in the baking aisle.

Too many dollars later, I was at home with several bags of flour and no plan.  I started Googling “gluten-free cookies” and found out that it takes at least 18 ingredients, 90 minutes of undivided attention and a small fortune to make a batch of cookies.  I also learned that it was best to make everything in it’s wee form (mini tart shells, mini muffins) and your chance of success was greater if the moon was waxing.  I slid the flours into the freezer and the receipt into the recycling and worked on getting rid of the parasite.

A few months later, I ordered a very popular thin cookbook full of wheat-free desserts.  I was smitten by that cookbook and successfully baked my way through half of it.  Then I stopped baking and realized that everything tasted great but was I essentially eating refined starches bound with agave nectar and xantham gum.  Even worse, I had no clue about the magic that took place in my mixing bowl and in the oven.  I was bound to the recipes- and I was itching to experiment.  I kept my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, retired the book and sighed once more when a friend shared that she had made the cookies and they had spread all over her baking sheet and were therefore unsuitable for shipping to her gluten-free sister.  I had no clue why that had happened.

Fast forward a few hundred gluten-free baked goods, one culinary school degree and a half dozen moves later and enter the new approach to baking gluten-free goodies.  I regret to inform you that I didn’t invent it.  Rather, I stumbled upon it on the very very very popular Gluten Free Girl and The Chef blog.  Alas, a commitment to whole grain flours, an eschewing of “the gums” and flexibility.  Read through the whole post here and understand that this kind of flexibility is unheard of in gluten-free baking.  This recipe is the perfect opportunity to take whole grains for a test drive in your kitchen.  It’s pretty resilient.

The whole-grain flour mix in the recipe is 70% whole grain flour and 30% starch.  I cleaned out my pantry and included organic almond flour, brown rice flour and corn flour.  Then I bulked up my new, improved gluten-free whole grain flour mixture with some freshly whirred oatmeal and quinoa flour.  I used arrowroot exclusively for the starch bit.  Then I veganized the original.

Vegan Whole Grain Gluten Free Muffins

Gluten-Free Whole Grain Muffins adapted from Shauna James Ahern adapted from Shuna Fish Lydon

Makes 12-16 muffins

2 tablespoons ground flax seed

300 grams creamed coconut (or other dairy-free milk)

2 tablespoons lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar, white vinegar)

350 grams whole grain flour mix

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

180 grams dry sugar (date, coconut, sucanat, brown, etc)

1 teaspoon salt

100 grams grapeseed oil (or canola oil)

some dried fruit

some toasted nuts

Heat oven to 350.  Lightly grease a muffin tin or line with muffin cups.  Put nuts on a baking sheet and toast in oven as it warms up.  Approximately ten minutes.

In a small bowl, mix ground flax seed with 6 tablespoons of water.  Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix creamed coconut with lemon juice.  Set aside.  (Note: I didn’t see much curdling action when I did this.  If nothing else, the thick texture of the creamed coconut and the tang from the lemon will do a fine job of approximating buttermilk.  Extra moisture and flavor are rarely unwelcome in the whole grain baked good.)

In a large bowl, mix whole grain flours, baking soda, baking power, sugar and salt.  In a separate container, toss dried fruit with a bit of this mixture to prevent it from clumping together in your muffins.

Whisk flax seed mixture, coconut mixture and oil in bowl.  Add to flour mixture.  When almost all of the flour has been moistened, add dried fruit and toasted nuts.  Mix until incorporated.  Spoon into muffin tins until 3/4 full.  Bake for 25-35 minutes.

Bonus: Did you know that you don’t have to bake all of your muffins (or cookies, or cakes) in one day?  Most batters will last a day or two in the refrigerator.  (Jacques Torres and others consider this step essential for their chocolate chip cookies.)  This is great for portion control and because day-old baked goods are half off for a reason.

I just baked off the remainder of yesterday’s batter and they were fantastic.  The dried apricot that I used in my version of this recipe had a chance to rehydrate and today’s batch had little wells of warm apricot jelly oozing out of every bite.  Wow.

Another Note: If a very very very popular blogger can post recipes for her audience with ingredients measured by weight (as opposed to volume) then so can I.  Starting with this post.

Caramelized Tofu with Grilled Eggplant, Radicchio and Brown Basmati Rice

Caramelized Tofu with Lime and Mint Recipe

Serves 4

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup tamari or soy sauce

1/2 cup peeled and sliced shallot

1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from 2 limes)

2 pounds tofu, cut into 1″ cubes and blotted dry

1/4 cup fresh mint, cut in chiffonade

Beautiful Eggplant, Long Shallots and Fresh Mint

1) Heat a large, deep skillet over medium high heat.  When hot, add one cup of sugar and a few tablespoons of water.  Sugar will bubble and turn into a liquid.  The liquid will  brown and caramelize in about ten minutes.

5 Minutes into the Caramelizing Process

10 Minutes into the Caramelizing Process

2) Mix tamari and 1/2 cup water.  Step back from the skillet (as there will be splashing) and add liquid.  Use a whisk to stir until liquid is incorporated into liquid.  This will take about two minutes.

Caramelized Sugar with Liquid Incorporated

3) Add shallots and cook until softened, about five minutes.

Blotted Tofu Cubes

4) Add tofu until warmed through and slightly puffed up.  Stir in lime juice and black pepper.

5) Sprinkle mint on top of tofu and sauce.

This dish would go well with long grain brown rice, a fresh green salad and a quick saute of your favorite veggies.

Our First Tree in Six Christmases. Strung with popcorn and cranberries. And a hand-felted monkey from a dear friend.

I’ve been bookmarking URLs and scribbling down a list of wishes each time I cook at home.  I hope this list will help you to find a unique and perfect present for the plant-eater who loves all things food on your holiday list.

1) I am on a quest to make the perfect dairy-less cheese.  I want to age it and cure it and mark it with a “V”.  Cheesemaking.com has organic microbial vegetable rennet that makes my heart sing.  They also have just about every press, mold and vat under the sun.  And wax!  Oh, the things that I could do with that wax.

2) I lived in Ohio for 22 years and I never, ever caught word about Lehman’s.  Their online and offline stores have all sorts of general store-ish items.  Including this German fermentation crock.  Too bad my fifth-generation Ohioan brother didn’t get my name.  That $25 special packaging fee is a bit steep.  Maybe I’ll just have to swing by Kidron, OH next time I’m in town.

3) Speaking of towns in Ohio that even native Ohioans have ever been to: How about Northfield, OH?  You’ll find Leener’s and this hot stovetop smoker there.  This is a one-of-a-kind of place that has Bubble Gum Kits and gives Root Beer its own tab, right next to Bread and Vinegar.

This is why I need a smoker: I had the Cauliflower & Waffles at Dirt Candy a couple of weeks ago and now I want all of my vegetables smoked (and battered).

4) I spied a delightful poster at the Greenmarket last week.  It had pencil drawings of all of the different varieties of winter squash that are grown and sold there.  The name at the bottom said Claudia Pearson and a fair amount of Googling led me to her Etsy store.  I adore everything here.  Especially the Recipe Greeting Card Set and the Mushroom Tea Towel.

5) We aren’t allowed to have pets in our building.  The next best thing are cultures that can turn ordinary plant matter into umami-packed goodness.  GEM Cultures doesn’t do phone calls or online orders.  But you can send a check in the snail mail with your order.  And a few weeks later you’ll get a world of possibility in your mailbox.  I would present my giftee with a check for $13 and a stamped envelope and let them choose which 5 kits they wanted from the Kit Culture Special on the Soy Cultures page.

6) Just in case you wanted to bundle a birthday and the next three Christmas’ in the deal, you could get them a Half Share in the Wild Gourmet Food CSA or a membership in the Wild Mushroom of the Month Club.  I’ve talked to and fawned over the two foragers at the New Amsterdam Market for the past couple of years.  This stuff is legit.

7) One might think that I would be scarred after having to carry a HUGE burnt orange lunch box through my middle school years.  (Now listed as VINTAGE?!?)  Well, I am.  (Scarred, not vintage.)  But my therapist thinks that having a stylish, shiny bento box would be very therapeutic.  I’ve been fighting the urge to get one of these for years, but they still make me coo.

8. Then there’s my Amazon Wish List.  If pressed, like if it were one of those phone booths filled with flying cash, I could add another 100 things to it in 60 seconds.  But these are the top 11 selections.  I’m just going to count this as one item on my Christmas list.  For simplicity.

This is where the list moves from dreamy to pragmatic.  From weekend kitchen projects to the simpler daily dinners.  Here is my kitchen doodad wish list.

a) Canning funnel – Best for getting chunky soups into mason jars to give to old lady friends and new neighbors.

b) Burner plate or heat tamer – We use one of these to make our coffee and I’ve already melted two handles.  Also good for controlling the temp under a pressure cooker.

c) Tortilla press – The one that I had when I was little was made of cast iron with a red bit of paint on the tip of the handle.  I can’t find any adult-sized presses with the same red flair, but I did find this one with the same text: “Hecho en Mexico Superior” or is that “Superior Hecho en Mexico”?

d) Bamboo Spider – The worst part about going to culinary school is that upon graduation you are given a little voice in the back of your head and when you even think about taking the easy (read: lazy and less perfect) way to the final product that voice kindly reminds you how much money you spent to know better.  Enter the blanch and the shock of each vegetable separately so that they cook to their own personal level of perfection and other acts of excellence.  Also, fishing your pasta out of its salted water with a spider is the way to make sure that you don’t dump all of your starchy pasta water down the drain.  Then you can add a ladle-full to the sauce in the pan in which you finish your pasta.  Just like you’re supposed to.

e) Silpat – You’ll save a bundle on parchment paper.  And you’ll be able to gain a few extra seconds on your tuiles.  You can also steam things between them…so you might need two.

f) Mini Donut Pan – Because my mom found one at Goodwill the same day that I was running around LA looking for one that I needed for a dinner party the following night and I still can’t get over her luck.

g) Vegetable Scrubber – I don’t know how I’ve managed to get by this long without one.

h) Spice Grinder – Having a coffee bean grinder that is only used for spices seems very luxurious.  Just like nice, fresh spices.

i) Soda Shooter – That’s how this whole thing started.  I love fizzy water.  I can avoid dipping into the salt and vinegar potato chips if I have fizzy water.  But I don’t feel good about drinking fizzy water out of a bottle.  However, rumor has it that I’m going to get a fizzy water maker this Christmas…but there were a few dollars left over.

The question was: Is there anything else that I would like?

Yes, if pressed, I can think of a few things.

It’s failed me more than once.  One of those times was a couple of years ago in the Hearst Mansion parking lot.  We were driving from here to there in our Airstream trailer and needed a little snack for tea time.  I had a brand new bag of teff.  I found a cookie recipe featuring the world’s smallest grain and whipped up a batch.  About 15 minutes later I pulled a sheet tray full of crumbs out of the oven.  The grain had mocked me.

I tried to redeem myself a year later.  This time I played it safe and made the muffin recipe on the back of the bag.  The batter looked pretty dry going in but I trusted Bob and his recipe testers over at the Red Mill.  But these did not turn out to be muffins; they were round biscotti.  I whipped up my version of crème anglaise, poured it over their still-warm bodies and ate them up.  I called it a deconstructed bread pudding.

Last week I went back to the bag with the same strategy.  I decided to try the other recipe on the back of the bag.  However, due to my previous experience with Bob, I decided to take a few liberties.  I changed the nut butter, made my own, changed the shape and added chocolate.  If all else failed, at least I had a bowl full of melted chocolate.

But they worked!  And I sent my sister this camera phone photo.  She sends me photos of her adorable child, I send her photos of cookies.

Chocolate-Kissed Teff and Almond Butter Cookies

Teff and Almond Butter Cookie recipe
Makes about 36 two-biters

1/2 bar yummy artisanal chocolate (I used Mast Brothers Sambirano Valley)

OR 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 cups unsalted toasted almonds (or 1 cup almond butter)

1/2 c maple syrup

1/2 c canola oil

1 t vanilla

1/2 t salt

1 1/2 c teff

Heat oven to 350.

Spread almonds into single layer on a rimmed baking sheet.  Bake for 10-15 minutes.  Shake tray about halfway through to remind them to toast evenly.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or lightly brush with oil.

Put chocolate chips in a large glass or metal bowl over a pot of hot water. Double boiler simulation. Turn heat to high. Leave them alone.  They’ll melt.

Put almonds in food processor.  Blend until almonds become almond butter.  Add oil, maple syrup and vanilla and blend until thoroughly blended.  In this instance, you can add dry to wet.  Add teff and salt to wet mixture and pulse until incorporated.

Pinch off about two tablespoons of dough. Make an a-okay sign with your left hand. Put dough in circle part of a-okay and press and turn with your right hand until you get a nice mini-cylinder. Alternatively, make two tablespoons of dough into a ball and press between your palms slightly flatten. Dough is a bit crumbly so I prefer the a-okay method.

Make a wee indentation in the top of each cookie.  Dollop in the chocolate. Bounce your spoon/knife on the dollop a bit to get the Hershey’s Kiss effect.

Bake for 10-13 minutes. Do not overbake.  Their bottoms will brown slightly but not much.  They may even feel slightly soft. 15 min maximum.

Transfer onto cooling rack immediately.

Eat while chocolate is still molten.*  Give to sister and her adorable child when slightly cooled.

PS- You don’t have to cook them all at once. The dough will last in the fridge for about five days or so. Bake a batch when you want them.  Hot and fresh.

*Eat molten things at your own risk.  Not responsible for burnt tongues, fingers, etc or chocolate drippings on your favorite slippers.

But then one of the other stages came back with “I make an amazing pie in a jar”.  For those unfamiliar with this Martha Steward-ian idea, a pie in a jar is just what it sounds like and perfect for those who like the crust to filling ratio to favor the crust.  It’s a mason jar lined with crust, filled with filling, topped with crust and then sealed.  You can tuck it away in the freezer and when you have a craving (or the unexpected guests that every food magazine readies you to expect come a-knockin’) you simply untuck it, take off the lid and pop it in a hot oven.

I did this last night.  Pearl had given me a sample of her wares and my husband had gone to bed early.  There was a whisper from the freezer and thirty minutes later I had a hot bite of sweet summer in my mouth and a vision of Pearl in my head.

Pearl's Pie in a Jar

Pearl’s Pie in Jar will be available at Taste of Place: A Members-Only Market for All Things Wild, Canned, and Cultivated on Sunday, September 26^th from 11-2 in a pop-up store just minutes from downtown Boulder.  Sign up for updates and free membership here.  Pearl is a student at Fairview High and knows her way around a commercial kitchen.