Boston Brown Bread

You can't have baked beans, like I had yesterday, without Boston brown bread. My mom used to save coffee cans so we could have fresh brown bread, and I remember how wonderfully moist and fragrant fresh brown bread was right from the can while it was still warm.

You don't have to wait until you have baked beans to enjoy this bread, though. It's very easy; it takes just a few minutes to get the batter together no yeast means that there are no special temperature requirements and no kneading. Then you can steam it in a pot on a back burner and forget about it for 2 -1/4 hours.


See here it's steaming away, almost done:

And fresh from the pot, I can hardly wait to let it cool, but it's necessary.

10 minutes.

I can wait that long.

And look! When you turn it out of the can, it has the "authentic" ridges from the coffee can!

I wish the Internet had smell-o-vision. You have no idea how fragrant this is right now as it is awaits being sliced, still steaming, all plump and moist.

Boston Brown Bread... with a hint of maple

Ingredients:

• Shortening or butter for greasing coffee can
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup rye flour
• 1/2 cup corn meal
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 allspice berries, crushed, or about 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/8 cup molasses
• 1/8 cup maple syrup
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup raisins

Equipment:

1 metal coffee can, 6 inches tall by 4 inches in diameter. I used a 10-ounce Café Bustelo can – make sure you remove any paper or plastic wrapper from the outside of the can and wash well to remove any residual adhesive

Directions:

1. Fill a large stock pot with enough water to come 1/3 of the way up the sides of your coffee can. Set a steamer rack inside the pot, or if you don’t have a steamer rack that will fit inside your stock pot, lay a kitchen towel on the bottom of the pot. Turn the heat to medium to get the water simmering.

2. Grease a cleaned-out coffee can with shortening or butter. In a large bowl, sift together the all-purpose flour, rye flour, corn meal, baking powder and soda, salt, allspice, cinnamon and raisins.

3. In a 2-cup measuring cup, mix together the molasses, maple syrup, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk until the batter is well-incorporated and smooth, with no lumps.

4. Pour the batter into the greased coffee can.

5. Cover the coffee can tightly with a double thickness of aluminum foil and secure with a rubber band. Set the can in the pot on the steamer rack or towel, cover the stock pot and turn the heat to high.

6. Once the water has come to a boil, reduce heat to low and let the water simmer bread for at least 2 hours and 15 minutes. Check to see if the bread is done bypiking it with a toothpick or cake tester. If it’s clean, the brad is done. Otherwise, cover the pot and keep steaming until done.

7. Once the bread is done, remove the can from the pot and let cool for 10 minutes before turning out of the container.

8. Slice and eat warm with butter. Tweet

Maple chipotle baked beans

For a while now, I've been craving real from-scratch New England baked beans. Some months ago I read up on bean varieties and came across several mentions of Steuben or Maine yellow eye beans being the best choice. I couldn't find them available anywhere in the stores here, so I bought a package on Amazon.

Check 'em out - creamy pale skin with a mustard-brown splotch marked with a tiny eye:

A closer look:

Many sources stated that a classic bean pot had the perfect shape for baking beans perfectly each time, so I  lucked out and found this vintage stone bean pot from eBay for $15 - a steal!

Then I had to find the right recipe to yield sweet and tangy beans, fragrant with molasses and spice. I knew I wanted to use maple syrup, but I also knew that after last year's successful maple-apple-chipotle barbecue sauce (recipe to come), that a touch of chipotle to the beans would bring a deep smokiness and hint of heat that would be a great pairing for the maple and molasses.

I looked through a bunch of different recipes, made note of the commonalities in procedure and ratios and jumped in.

Basically, I winged it, but winging it got me this:

Delicious sweet and tangy baked beans.

Maple chipotle baked beans

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. yellow eye beans
• approx. 1/2 cup of onion-type things: I used a combo of shallots and onion
• 2 strips thick-cut peppered bacon (1.8 oz.), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 T Dijon mustard
• 2 T molasses
• 2 T maple sugar (you can sub in brown sugar if you can't lay your hands on granulated maple)
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 dried chipotle pepper - soaked for an hour in hot water, cut into chunks - about 1/4 cup total
• 1/2 cup strained reserved soaking liquid from the chipotle pepper
• water to cover

Directions:

1. Place the dried chipotle pepper in a bowl and cover with boiling water, Let sit for an hour, and then strain the soaking liquid, reserving ½ cup. Chop the chipotle and set aside.

2. Rinse the beans and put them in a large pot, cover with water plus an inch cover the beans, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover the pot and simmer for an hour over very low heat.

3. Preheat oven to 300 F. Chop the onion or shallot into large chunks and set aside.

4. Mix together the maple syrup, ketchup, Dijon mustard, molasses, maple sugar, Kosher salt and reserved soaking chipotle liquid and add the chopped chipotle and onion or shallot.

5. When the beans are tender, drain them and place in a bean pot, then add the bay leaf and bacon pieces and pour in the maple-chipotle sauce. Stir well, then add more water until the beans are covered.

6. Cover with aluminum foil and then nest the lid down tightly and bake for 5 hours or until the beans are fully cooked. Check every hour or so, stirring the beans and adding water as needed to keep the beans covered. The beans are done when they are tender to your liking - some people like them mushy; others like a bit of bite left to them.

7. Serve hot, preferably with a slice of piping-hot Boston brown bread topped with a pat of cold butter:

Tweet

Maple-Walnut Butter Tart

I am a huge fan of maple, particularly with walnut. Maple-walnut ice cream is one of my all-time favorites, and a few years ago, I made mini maple-walnut apple crisps, which my kids devoured pretty quickly. Even though I live in a maple-producing state, and real, good-quality maple syrup is abundant and relatively easy to find in any grocery store, you'd be surprised find that, short of visiting a maple sugar house, it is very difficult to find granulated maple sugar or maple butter.

This summer at the downtown farmer's market, I found a vendor there one day with locally produced granulated maple sugar and maple butter, and I quickly snagged the largest jar of the sugar that they had, knowing that I could find at least 101 uses for it.

This is my maple-walnutty version of the classic Canadian sweet, the butter tart. It's similar to English treacle tarts, or Southern pecan pie, and not dissimilar to the molasses-based  Shoofly pie of the Amish - it basically seems to be a buttery crust filled with a sugar-intense, gooey filling. Everything else is optional, except for the sighs of delight, and maybe the wish for a vial of insulin.

Maple-Walnut Butter Tart

Ingredients:

For the press-in butter crust

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 1 egg yolk

For the filling:

• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons packed granulated maple sugar
• 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted and then cooled
• 1 egg
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• golden raisins
• chopped walnuts, almost to the point of being pulverized
• granulated maple sugar

Directions:

1. Make the crust by mixing together the flour and sugar and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. 
2. Add the egg yolk and mix well, pressing it into a ball. 
3. Rip off a portion of the dough and press it into your tart pan. Repeat with more dough - you will likely have some of this dough left over. Wrap it in plastic wrap and keep it for another use. 
4. Lay down a small piece of parchment in the tart shells and add some baking weights or dried beans and and blind bake them at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes. 
5. Remove and let cool.
6. Raise the oven temp  to 400 degrees F. 
7. Mix together the maple syrup, 2 T of brown sugar and 2 T of maple sugar. 
8. Add the melted butter and stir to combine well. 
9. Add the egg, stir. Add the salt and vanilla and mix until it is nicely smooth.
10. Place a few golden raisins and some of the chopped walnut in the bottom of the tart shells. 
11. Sprinkle some granulated maple sugar over it and pour in the sugar mixture. 
12. Top with a bit more of the chopped walnut and sprinkle some granulated maple sugar on top and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until just set.

Tweet

Maple Brown Sugar Apple Crisps

I love fall. The cooler, blustery weather, the colors of the changing trees, the late-season vegetables and fruits, it's difficult to think of something that I don't like about this season. I don't mind the shorter days and long, dark nights, as they contribute to a delicious sense of coziness as I sit on my couch wrapped in flannel while something tasty and fragrant with the special smells of autumn cooks in the kitchen.

We're well into fall now, and I thought I'd celebrate this autumnal mood with apples. I took a trip to my favorite local orchard, Navarino Orchard, and picked up 1/2 a bushel of my favorite baking apple, Northern Spies, and two sugar pumpkins. On the drive home, my mind was filled with all the different dishes I'd be making: pumpkin gingerbread is one likely suspect, and my Pie for Breakfast Apple Pie is another.

I had a hankering for that lovely maple brown sugar combination with the tart apples, so I made these individual apple crisps.

Maple- Brown Sugar Apple Crisps

Ingredients:

• 2 apples - I used 2 Northern Spies.
  
• 4 maple sugar candies, pulverized to a fine powder (about 2 T maple sugar)
  
• 2 T brown sugar


• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup oats
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 T butter, melted
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.


2. Put the pulverized maple sugar candy and the brown sugar into a bowl. Mix well.


3. Peel and slice the apples into very thin slices. Add to the sugar mixture in the bowl and toss well with a fork, making sure the pieces are all coated.


4. Put the mixture into greased ramekins. This made enough for three.


5. In a food processor, pulse the walnuts until coarsely ground.


6. Add the oats and pulse again until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.


7. Dump this mixture into the same bowl that held the apple mixture. The bowl should still have some of the maple / brown sugar mixture in it. Stir well.
   


8. Add about 1/4 cup of brown sugar (I usually add it in tablespoon increments and taste as I go) and mix well.
   


9. Add the melted butter, and work with your hands or a pasty cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.


10. Divide between the three ramekins, packing down the crumb topping firmly.


11. Bake in a 375 oven for 25 minutes or until it's bubbling nicely around the edges.


12. Take out and let cool on a rack for a bit and then serve warm topped with vanilla ice cream. You can serve it in the ramekin or scoop it out into a larger bowl.
    

Tweet

My Favorite Things

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things."

OK, so those are not necessarily my favorite things, but these are a few of my (current) favorite things:

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee

I am not as coffee-snob as others out there: I will drink day-old coffee out of desperation (even re-heated *gasp*), and I use an automatic drip coffee maker in addition to my french press instead of a coffee gourmand-approved Chemex pot. However, I buy whole beans to grind up fresh and store them in an air-tight canister on the counter, never in the freezer, and I am tempted to hunt down a local roaster to get my beans roasted for me.

I've tried a lot of different beans, and have settled on a distinct favorite, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. The simple act of opening the canister holding these lovely beans releases a rush of complex scents that promise one of the best cups of coffee you will ever have.

I actively proselytize the merits of this bean, and have occasionally run into some smartass who makes the comment, "Ethiopia? They have coffee in Ethiopia?" Ok, they may not have a Starbucks on every corner in Addis Ababa, but according to legend, to first person to discover the peculiar benefits of the coffee beans was a 9th century AD Ethiopian shepherd who noticed his sheep acting strangle after chowing down on some funky red berries. Apparently not the cautious type, he tried a few and became the first person to experience that somewhat manic thrill of the caffeine buzz.

Although this story is most likely apocryphal - for starters I can't believe that people waited that long to sample those berries. I mean, we'd been drinking wine and beer for centuries already, how could the ancients have avoided trying just about every berry or plant they came across - most people do believe that the coffee plant originated in this part of the world.

So much for Juan Valdez and his donkey.

Chocolate-covered Espresso Beans

If you are ever in need of a fairly quick caffeine and chocolate-induced high, grab some of these. Now you may see the chocolate and coffee pairing and say, "Oh, mocha. How nice," but this is about as far away from that standard anemic mocha as you can get. This is a gorgeous symbiosis of flavor that absolutely explodes in your mouth with each satisfied crunch.

I am not a fan of mocha, in fact. I don't like most flavored coffees. I always got the impression that they took lower quality beans and tried to mask the flaws by painting over them with chemical analogues of other flavors - hazelnut, blueberry, French vanilla. Usually, I find them cloyingly sweet, completely overpowering the coffee essence, though that is probably the point.

With these chocolate-covered beans, you get a burst of coffee and chocolate every time.

Chocolate-covered Cacao Nibs

I remember in one scene from the movie "Chocolat," how raw cacao nibs supposedly brought a husband's hidden passion boiling to the surface. I thought to myself, "Man, I have to try those sometime." I priced them out on the internet and found that you're really paying for that rawness. Quite by accident, I found these chocolate-covered cacao nibs in the natural foods section of Wegman's.

I tore into the bag as soon as I got home. About 5 minutes later, I looked into the depths of that empty bag, stunned, wanting just one more, even a crumb. Those mis-shapen, crunchy bits of pure chocolate fusion blew my taste buds.

Oh, plus, they're chock-full of antioxidants as Dr. Oz would say!

Ha! No one eats chocolate for the antioxidants. It's not as though it were a forkful of broccoli. "Oh," you sigh, "If I MUST." Hell no. We eat this stuff because it tastes so goddamn good.

These are no exception.

Maple Sugar Candy

I live in a maple syrup-producing state, so why is it so difficult to find maple sugar candy and granulated maple sugar? I can understand the expense: they boil down 40 gallons of sap for just 1 gallon of syrup, and then even further to extract the sugar. There is more demand for the syrup than the sugar, so I get why I might not be able to find large bags of it in the grocery store next to Domino's granulated white sugar, but still, it should not be completely unattainable.

I can usually only ever find the candy at the local orchard stores, and even then, a tiny bag of 6 candies or so costs about $3.50. I have never seen maple butter or jars of granulated maple sugar there.

One time I made a maple-walnut apple pie by crushing up 10 maple sugar candies and mixing them in with the apples and ground walnuts. It was a wee bit expensive, and in my kids eyes, would have been a tragedy if the pie hadn't tasted so good. Still, next time, I'd like to have a jar of the real stuff.

Pink Himalayan Salt

I know, this is the big trend right now, this and cooking on those large slabs of this pink salt, but when I saw the little jar of these pink crystals, I could not help myself.

I mean, I don't even like the color pink, but these just look so cool in my sea salt grinder. Plus, I get a kick out of knowing that I am eating something whose age can be counted on a geological time-line.

Besides, did I mention that it is pink?



I can't leave without including the song.

Tweet

Maple Wheat Dinner Rolls

Since Thanksgiving and Christmas were just upon us, and sometimes that means cooking a dinner (if you're crazy enough to be hosting,) or bringing a dish (if it's pot-luck), I thought I'd share my favorite dinner roll recipe. I found this recipe in a magazine ages ago; I believe it was the now-defunct Veggie Life.

I usually double this recipe and make and herbed popover too because the family gatherings tend to be large and people like their food. :)

Maple Wheat Dinner Rolls

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 pkg. dry yeast
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 2 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Oil for brushing

Directions:

1. Combine the warm water and maple syrup in a large bowl and stir. 
2. Add the yeast and stir the mixture well with a fork to dissolve the clumps.
3. Cover and let sit until the mixture gets foamy, about 5 minutes.
4. Add the oil, whole-wheat flour, 1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour, and salt to the yeast mixture in the large bowl. Stir until well mixed.
5. Dust a work surface with some the remaining flour and place the dough on it. Knead the dough for 10-12 minutes, adding extra flour as you go. - This dough will be slightly tacky, but it should not stick to your hands.
6. Cover the dough let rise until doubled, 30 to 60 minutes.
7. Lightly oil an 8 by 8-inch baking pan. Divide the dough into 16 balls. Brush the tops with oil, and place in the prepared pan. Cover and let rise again until until the rolls have doubled, another 30 to 60 minutes.
8. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.
9. Serve warm with butter.

Tweet