penne frittata with basil and ricotta

A week or two ago Caleb and I had this delicious Penne Frittata with Basil and Ricotta, and it is so easy to make and very delicious that I just had to share it with you.

I found the recipe over at Sunday Suppers and it has recently been featured in Martha Stewart Living. Caleb found the basil a little too strong, so I think the next time I make it I'll try a little less, or else some other sort of combination of flavours. I used my favourite penne made out of kamut flour instead of wheat and it tasted just fine. In fact, we almost ate the whole dish for dinner!

lemon raspberry oatmeal muffins.

Finding out I was allergic to wheat one year ago took a toll on my baking adventures. I am still learning how to substitute different flours into my baked goods to yield similar results (and taste) as using good ol' all purpose flour. Many of these trials have resulted in sub-par baked goods or outright failures, but on Saturday morning I baked some muffins, and boy, were they delicious!

These muffins are light and fluffy with a mild lemon flavour that compliments the raspberries just right. This tangy citrus flavour is balanced out nicely by the sweet oat meal, making this a delicious recipe that is easy to make.

Lemon Raspberry Oatmeal Muffins

Adapted from The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook, by Elizabeth Baird.

The original recipe calls for two cups of all-purpose flour so if you'd like to do that, feel free. Even if you aren't allergic to wheat or have a sensitivity to gluten, using different flours in your everyday baking is a great way to integrate more food types into your diet. Different grains have different benefits, and everyone's body can use more diversity in the types of foods we eat.

This recipe also calls for buttermilk. If you don't have buttermilk on hand, don't worry, I never do either. Instead for every 1 cup of buttermilk called for in a recipe use one cup of regular milk with 1 Tbsp. vinegar or lemon juice stirred together and left to sit for 10 minutes to let the acid permeate the milk. There, you have a pretty close resemblance to butter milk.

1 cup oat flour

1 cup buckwheat flour (these are the two I chose for this recipe, but choose whatever types you want)

1¼ cup buttermilk

1 cup packed brown sugar

1½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 cup quick coking rolled oats

1 Tbsp. grated lemon rind

2 eggs

⅓ cup vegetable oil (I use canola because it is very flavour neutral)

1 tsp vanilla

¾ cup frozen raspberries

Preheat oven to 375℉.

In a large bowl combine flour and buttermilk. Let sit for 10 minutes (or longer, make ahead the night before and allow to sit overnight - soaking the grains makes the muffins nice and moist).

To the flour and buttermilk mixture add brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, rolled oats and lemon rind.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, and vanilla. Pour over dry ingredients and mix until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Sprinkle frozen raspberries (feel free to use more than amount above) over mixture and fold into batter.

Spoon into greased or paper-lined muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops are firm to the touch. Let cool in pan on rack for 5 minutes. Transfer to racks and let cool completely.

Yield: 24 muffins (although the original recipe says 12, so I guess it depends on how much you pour into your muffin cups - I filled them ¾ full).

Store in airtight contain for 2 days or freeze for up to 2 weeks.

peanut butter cups.

Last night, for 'girls' night,' I had an opportunity to make some peanut butter cups. All week I had been craving some choclate-y goodness so when I was given the opportunity to make the dessert for our night I just had to make these delicious little cups.

Best when slightly chilled, these little guys are very sweet with just the right amount of saltiness - just enough salt that it seems an afterthought. If not restrained, I could probably gobble up half a dozen of them and then suffer a sugar-high for the next week and a half. These babies are sweet and good, but a single one makes a good serving (or two ... depending on how long the 'dessert portion' of your meal lasts into the evening).
The original recipe is found in Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It by Karen Solomon (Ten Speed Press) - a book I first discovered here. I followed her recipe precisely for the batch I made last night.

The original recipe calls for confectioners' sugar but I think that substituting fine sugar or granulated sugar in place of the confectioners' sugar will make the inside just a teensy bit grainier and even more crumbly - something I thought would add just a little additional texture to these lovely peanut butter cups.

Peanut Butter Cups

Adapted slightly from Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It

Filling

1 ⅓ cups fresh roasted and salted peanuts

2 teaspoons honey

1 teaspoon neutral vegetable oil, like canola or sunflower

2 tablespoons fine or granulated sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

Coating

2 cups chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

I used milk chocolate, a chocolate I love, which made them very sweet. For less sweet cups use semi-sweet or dark chocolate.

Place paper or silicone liners in cupcake pan nearby.

To make the filling, in a food processor, puree the peanuts for 3 to 4 minutes, until they are very smooth - almost like the creamy peanut butter you buy at the store.

Add the honey, oil, sugar, vanilla, and salt and puree until completely combined.

Using about 2 teaspoons at a time, form 12 evenly sized balls of the peanut butter mixture and flatten into discs that will fit into the centre of the cupcake liner but not touch the sides.

To prepare the coating microwave the chocolate on high for 1-minute, stir well with a fork to distribute the heat. Microwave for 1-minute more and stir again. You may possibly have to heat your chocolate for another 30 - 60 seconds, what you're aiming for is melted chocolate that looks satiny and comes off the fork in ribbons with no clumps.

Working quickly, place just less than a tablespoon of chocolate in the bottom of a liner. Move the chocolate around so it completely covers the bottom and the sides part-way up. Gently drop the peanut butter disc into the centre of the liner and tap it gently into the chocolate, being careful not to push it all the way through the chocolate to the bottom.

Cover the peanut butter centres with another half-tablespoon (approximate) of chocolate, covering the top completely and allowing it to surround the sides of the peanut butter centre.

To smooth to tops either use a spoon or gently shake the cupcake pan. Let sit, undisturbd, for at least 4 hours, until the cups harden completly.

Note: After waiting 4 hours, our cups were still not solid (and we ate our first 'taste-test' cups with a spoon). Although advised in the cook book not to refrigerate, I have and they taste delicious and slightly hard and they melt ever-so-slowly in your hand as you eat them.

These will store up to 2 weeks in an airtight container, that is, if you don't eat them all immediately.

Yield: 12 peanut butter cups

tomato.

This month, Caleb and I are trying very hard to eat better. We're following guidelines found in Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. As a result, we're working at eliminating foods from our diets that have unnecessary preservatives, ingredients that seem unpronounceable (or have numbers in them), and items with high-fructose corn syrup. Those are just some of the 'rules' we're trying hard to follow. As a result, I've been making more things from scratch. I love cooking and working with food, and was excited to try to make the perfect tomato pasta sauce. I love tomato pasta sauce that has tons of ingredients in it, and chunks of tomato. Caleb likes really smooth pasta sauce that coats the pasta and wraps itself around the noodles. My challenge was to find a great tomato pasta sauce that we could both enjoy and was simple to make.

The sauce I came up with is an adaptation of "A Fine Tomato Pasta Sauce" in The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook. It makes a lot of sauce, so be sure to have some empty Mason jars ready to store it in the freezer. Also, be sure to let the sauce cool completely before putting the lid on it and freezing it, or else you might find that Mason jars are tough, but no match for expanding heat and tomato sauce. I recommend putting it in the jar (or whatever container you want to use to freeze it), keeping the lid off, put it in the fridge for a few hours, and then, when completely cool, put the lid on and move it to the freezer.

A Smooth Tomato Pasta Sauce

Adapted from The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook, by Elizabeth Baird

A dollop of olive oil.

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 carrots, grated

4 tsp dried basil

2 tsp dried oregano

A pinch of hot pepper flakes

1 tsp each salt and pepper

1 can (2.8 L) crushed tomatoes

4 tbsp tomato paste

3 tsp granulated sugar

In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat; cook garlic, onion, carrot, basil, oregano, hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper, stirring often, 5 minutes or until onion is softened.

Add tomatoes, stir in tomato paste and sugar. Bring sauce to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and with an immersion blender , purée until smooth.

Either serve over top of pasta or else refrigerate in airtight container for a couple of days or else freeze for up to 1 month. Reheat to serve.

Note: Depending on the type of tomatoes you buy they could be or less acidic. Adjust the amount of sugar to help balance out the acidity. Or, use your own favourite sweetener, try honey, stevia, brown sugar, or something completely different. This sauce is open to interpretation, and not yet perfect, so feel free to put in some of your favourite spices and mix it up to make it your own.

delicious.

Sometimes when I'm cooking in the kitchen I like to experiment. But on most days when I'm in the kitchen say, roasting a chicken, I'll add a few (traditional) spices to create some delicious flavour, say, garlic, salt, pepper, and herbs de provence. But, sometimes I like to be a little more adventurous than that, maybe use cayenne pepper instead of black, and paprika instead of salt, with garlic and mustard powder. Former picky-eater Caleb has been very brave trying some of the foods that come out of my kitchen, and for that, I am forever grateful. I know our relationship is stronger because he will try anything I create in the kitchen and almost always smile and say "yum." The problem is, I'm worried that I might create something that is the opposite of 'yum' and instead the food twists your tongue in a knot and your stomach too.

Although I'm not afraid to try new things of my own creation in the kitchen, it is nice to have a support system encouraging your experiments on the way. And with that, I introduce you, dear reader, to my favourite new kitchen companion. Meet The Flavor Bible.

Compiled by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg it is an "essential guide to culinary creativity, based on the wisdom of America's most imaginative chefs." It has helped me create the Butternut Squash Soup below.

You can find virtually any ingredient you might want to cook with, and find a list of other ingredients that compliment the flavour as well as lists of specific combinations that are tried and true.

Take the following few examples:

chicken + avocado + bacon + garlic + mayonnaise + tarragon

chicken + cloves + rosemary + yogurt

(Already my chicken options got a lot more flavourful.)

mango + black pepper + lemon + mint + passion fruit

scallops + bacon + garlic + chanterelle mushrooms

scallops + bay leaf + vanilla

butternut squash + bacon + maple syrup + sage

For 380 pages the lists go on and on. It even includes tips on how different ingredients are best cooked, but there are no recipes - no religious cooking rules to follow. This book helps me enjoy the process of cooking as much as the end product, it's a platform for the imagination.

Butternut Squash Soup

I was almost impatient to start 'soup season' this Fall, and even though our apartment is almost always too hot, I started making soup early in October. Every time I make a soup it is a little different, depending on the ingredients in my pantry and how much time I have to spend on it. But here is an approximation of a soup I made a couple of weeks ago that had both of us smiling by the end of the bowl. The inspiration was from The Flavour Bible.

1 butternut squash

butter

chicken stock (home made or low-sodium store bought)

sage

maple syrup and/or brown sugar

I like to cut my squash in half, butter the exposed flesh and roast them in a 350°F oven for half an hour or more, until the inside is really soft. (To prepare the squash take the butt of a chef's knife and hit the stem until it pops off, then slice the squash in half, take a spoon and remove the seeds, you can then roast them separately if you want for a snack.)

Once the squash is soft all the way through (using a sharp knife, it should slide easily through the squash), remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.

Using tongs or wearing an oven mitt in one hand, remove the skin of the squash with a knife.

Cut the squash into cubes.

Place in a medium-sized (3-4L) saucepan, add 4 cups chicken stock, sage, and bring to a boil. (Tip: To keep the sage from floating around everywhere, wrap it in cheesecloth and tie some twine around it and attach it to the handle of the saucepan for easy retrieval.)

Let boil for 20 minutes, or however long you feel the ingredients need to mingle.

Remove sage and take saucepan off the heat.

Using a hand-held blender, blend the squash and soup stock until a consistent texture. I like thick soup, but if you want your soup thinner, add more stock or water.

Add maple syrup (or brown sugar, or both) to taste.

Serve with small slices of bacon as garnish.