Archives for July 2007
Not your average zucchini bread
Yes it’s there…see those delicate flecks of green and how they contrast so tastily with the deep, rich brown of the chocolate…really, it is as good as it looks. Yes I know every food blogger is writing about zucchini bread…but what else can you do when practically the whole continent of North America is disappearing under piles and piles of the great green squash. This is my public service post…there is a better way.
Most zucchini breads are essentially run of the mill spice breads with zucchini tossed in. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that I saw an opportunity to introduce the sweet, sweet seduction of chocolate into the mix. After all, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t try to come up with a chocolate treat to accompany my morning coffee…and if it also incorporates a veggie…well then it was truly meant to be. This bread packs a double chocolate whammy with cocoa and chocolate chips. So when you’re at the farmers’ markets this weekend pickup some zucchini and mix it up.
Geeky double chocolate zucchini bread
1 stick of butter melted
1 cup of dark brown sugar
1/2 cup of white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups whole wheat white flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1 cup pecans
2 medium zucchinis (about 3 cups) grated
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line 2 large loaf pans with parchment.
Combine the butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla in a bowl. Stir well until it is totally combined. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. Add the butter/egg mixture to the flour and stir gently to begin combining. Stop and add the zucchini, chocolate chips, and pecans. Continue to stir to combine all the ingredients but don’t stir too much. Fill the loaf pans and bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the bread comes out clean. I start checking at 30 minutes and then add time as needed.
When they are baked let them rest in their pans for 5 minutes and then move the breads out of the pans and onto a rack. Let them cool before slicing. Wrapped well they should last 4-5 days. They freeze well too.
Cultured butter…enormous flavor and no fuss
GH always dreams of the day I make my own cheese. I’m not there yet, but I’ve taken another step towards that end. This week I made cultured butter. A few weeks back the NYT’s food section published an article about how to make butter. Wow, it sounded easy…however I’ve had a lot of “oh no” and “what the frack have I got myself into” moments thanks to those pages. But I decided to give it a try and I ordered a half gallon of heavy cream from our dairy. Then I started thinking about what I like about butter. We’re lucky enough here in Wisconsin to be able to buy really delicious, fresh, cultured, organic, sweet butter and while I love all those things about it I especially love that it’s cultured. It’s the zip, the zest, the tang that the cultured cream gives and you can smell it as you unwrap the stick…good stuff.
A quick check of the internets landed me at Traveler’s Lunchbox where I learned that culturing cream is as simple as making creme fraiche. So I took my cream and added about 1/3 cup of fage yogurt, stirred it up and let it sit on the counter for about 18 hours. Then I chilled it in the refrigerator overnight and the next morning I made butter.
I put the cream in the bowl of my mixer and fitted it with the whisk attachment. I covered the top of the bowl with saran wrap, leaving an area open for the orbital spinning of the whisk. I turned it on to medium, set the timer for 8 minutes because the recipe indicates that it takes 5 to 8 minutes so I wanted to see how long it would really take. Within 4 minutes the cream was turning yellow and then it started pebbling and then the buttermilk started spattering up onto the saran wrap. According to the directions it was done and it was about 4:49 in total time.
At this point I followed the instructions precisely and it all seemed easy although everything about it was totally foreign. Squeezing butter is not natural but it worked and I got quite a bit of buttermilk for my baking projects. It also produced a lot of butter with a taste so fresh and delicious that we were all stunned. Think of the possibilities, dinner rolls, corn on the cob, muffins, pasta.
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What will I do differently next time?
- I’ll double the amount of yogurt just to see what happens
- I’ll have a bowl of iced water ready for the squeezing and pressing part to keep the butter cool as I squeeze and press the buttermilk out
- I’ll have my parchment paper precut and my bowls, sieves, and strainers out and ready to use
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What should you do?
- Run out and get the best local cream available
- Culture that luscious cream
- Chill the cultured cream before you start making the butter
My dairy pasteurizes at a low temperature and doesn’t homogenize their products and I think that makes a huge difference. I’m researching how to turn their product into cheese next.
Here’s the recipe from the NYT
Homemade Butter and Buttermilk
6 cups organic heavy cream
Salt to taste (optional).
1. Pour the cream into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk. Tightly cover the top of the bowl with plastic wrap and start mixer on medium-high speed. The cream will go through the whipped stage, thicken further and then change color from off-white to pale yellow; this will take at least 5 to 8 minutes. When it starts to look pebbly, it’s almost done. After another minute the butter will separate, causing the liquid to splash against the plastic wrap. At this point stop the mixer.
2. Set a strainer over a bowl. Pour the contents of the mixer into the strainer and let the buttermilk drain through. Strain the buttermilk again, this time through a fine-mesh sieve set over a small bowl; set aside.
3. Keeping the butter in the strainer set over the first bowl, knead it to consolidate the remaining liquid and fat and expel the rest of the buttermilk. Knead until the texture is dense and creamy, about 5 minutes. Strain the excess liquid into the buttermilk. Refrigerate the buttermilk.
4. Mix salt into the butter, if you want. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate. Makes about 16 ounces (2 cups) each of butter and buttermilk.
Get your salad on
For me, salad is a vehicle to enhance tomatoes…now that might not seem like a big deal to you… but to me…well, I’m looking to enhance natural perfection, so I try just a little bit harder each and every day.
This brilliant concoction was my lunch. It started with some fresh corn, lightly cooked and chilled, then cut from the cob. To that I added a diced onion from my CSA share, and a crisp, bright green bell pepper that actually smelled like a green bell pepper that I purchased from the delightful Gassen family at the Westside Farmers’ Market. I added in some shrimp, and tossed it with a combination of mango chilli vinegar, lime juice, olive oil, chili oil, and dried chipotle. I was specifically look for a sweet, citrusy burn…one where the burn isn’t apparent right away but sneaks in…not overwhelming but more ladylike. But stand back now because this is where I got my freak on (so to speak), I added 4 slices of dried, chilied mango diced finely. This absolutely made the salad come alive and dance.
Easy as pie…really quick too. Obviously the bright colors made it a breeze to plate but I had the added benefit of those stunning red and green zebra-strip tomatoes. They have an nice acidic note so they married well with sweetish, citusy spice of the salad. Everything got a liberal toss of sea salt and that was it…the tomatoes and salad were not just marrying well…lord no…they were actually spooning. No lie!
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