Spicy Orange Salad

This is awesome: simple, awesome, and summery. And awesome. It’s based on a salad common in Morocco, Spain, and places between.

Sweet oranges give a tang that enhances the spiciness of green onion and chili pepper, and pepitas add a bit of crunch. This is ased on the recipe here, plus some tweaks based on 2 orange salad recipes in the NY Times.

We made this for Mother’s Day along with the gouda-red-onion quesadillas and garlicky black beans.

Ingredients:

• 5 blood oranges or navel oranges, peeled thoroughly, quartered, and sliced 1/4″ width-wise
• 2 green onions, chopped up to about 1/4″ or thinner using kitchen scissors (for the white parts, first remove and discard oot nubbin and halve the white part lengthwise)
• 1/2 tsp dried crushed red chili pepper
• 1 1/2 Tbsp etra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 to 1/2 c pepitas (uncooked pumpkin seeds) or other toasted nuts such as walnuts
• 1/4 to 1/2 c dried raisins

Method:

• Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss thoroughly.
• Cover and chill in refrigerator for a minimum of 30min (also delicious the day after).
• Serve chilled.

3-Minute Banana Bread or Carrot Cake (Single-serving)

First post-Iraq post!

Today is one of those days where I was planning to go to the gym earlier so I didn’t make lunch—but then I ate a bunch of gummy bears and shopped for furniture online and now it’s 1310 and I need to go buy a mattress. Well, now I want food before I go shopping. I am also procrastinating because I hate shopping for anything.

I went into my kitchen and spotted a brown, overripe banana. If I hadn’t eaten all my oatmeal, I would make oatmeal with a banana and walnuts. Instead, I decided to make a banana and walnut mash of goodness. But no, wait! How about banana bread?! Banana bread it is.

I know everyone’s been posting microwave single-serving desserts for a while now. I think it’s funny everyone “just” discovered that you can make baked things in the microwave. Perhaps they were never up late procrastinating  studying for finals.

This is a quick, sloppy banana bread recipe for the lazy or those in a hurry.

What you need:

• 1 very ripe banana
• a handful of walnuts (shelled of course. Unless you like to eat the shells.)
• about 2 1/2 tblsp whole wheat flour
• maybe 1/4 tsp baking soda or less.
• about 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• two dashes of nutmeg
• two dashes of allspice
• about 1/2 cup of water
• a bowl
• a fork
• a microwave

Peel the banana. Put it in the bowl and mash it up. Crumble the walnuts and put them in. Add the dry ingredients. Pour in enough water to make it a little wetter than cookie dough and more viscous than normal banana bread batter.

Cook it in the microwave for 2 minutes. It will be sticky at that point, but I like my banana bread sticky, so I went no further.

Now it’s time to buy a mattress.

It may not look particularly appetizing--but it's a single serving. Nobody's judging your skillz here.

P.S. I made carrot cake the next day.

5-Minute Carrot Cake Ingredients:

• 2 carrots
• 3 tblsp Whole wheat flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1 tblsp molasses
• 1 tblsp honey
• about 1/2 cup water
• a handful of walnuts, crumbled

Shred the carrots. Mix the dry ingredients. Mix in the water, molasses and honey. Mix in the carrots and walnuts. Cook for 3 minutes. Consume.

 

Starr Ranch Meyer Lemon Tartlet Squares

Starr Ranch had a winetasting during the Paso Wine Harvest Festival last weekend, and served these tartlet squares paired with their Starr Ranch Viognier (that stuff is delicious — a nose like the meringue on lemon meringue pie, plus apricot and baked pear). Anyway, this is a quick 1-bowl recipe; very easy and tasty, and lends itself well to a double batch.

• For Original Crust (thinner, denser, butterier):
  • 1 stick (1/2 c) butter, sliced into strips and piled loosely in a Pyrex bowl
  • 1c flour
  • 1/4 c powdered sugar
• For Shortbread Crust (thick, biscuity, also buttery)
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 to 1 1/2 c slivered almonds, whirled in food processor until mealy
• Custard layer (same no matter which crust you choose):
  • juice of 1 Meyer lemon (about 4 Tbsp)
  • zest of 1 Meyer lemon (about 2-4 tsp)
  • 2 eggs, beaten slightly
  • 1 c sugar
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 2 Tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 350°. Place the butter in in the bowl and melt it in the microwave. Thoroughly mix in the dry ingredients for the crust, and press into a lightly greased 8″ x 8″ baking dish.

While the oven preheats, zest and juice the lemons into the same bowl you used for the flour mix. Add the eggs and sugar, and mix. When the crust is in the oven, set the timer to 12 to 20 minutes. Add the baking powder and flour to the egg/lemon mix and mix thoroughly, then set aside while the crust cooks.

When the crust is just barely blushed on the edges (NOT toasted — remember, it will get more oven time in a minute!), remove from the oven. Briefly mix up the lemon mix again so that the settled sugar isn’t stuck on the bottom, and pour the whole schamole over the crust. Return the whole thing to the oven and cook again for another 17-20 minutes, until the top has set and appears to be firm but not dried out.

Chill 10 min to several hours, sprinkle with more powdered sugar (you can put a tablespoonful at a time into a wire-mesh sieve and sprinkle it that way). Cut into 1″ squares and serve chilled. Store in an airtight container in the fridge; should keep about a week.
NOTES:

The winery owner says the original recipe calls for just 2 Tbsp lemon juice and 2 tsp grated lemon peel, but she instead uses one whole Meyer lemon per recipe (all the zest and all the juice), which comes out to about double the lemon of the 2T/2t version). If you do not have Meyer lemon, you can use the zest and juice of 1/2 lemon combined with the zest and juice of 1/3 to 1/2 a medium orange (1/2 is better). The shortbread crust is adapted fromthe Chocolatey Raspberry Crumble Bars.

Myth Muffins

I got a muffin pan today for 50 cents at the big Goodwill, and I’d been just waiting for a chance like this to try out this muffin recipe. They’re “real” muffins – no butter & not oversweet; they’re filling and have “oomph.”

Click the “read more” link for a vegan version: a pumpkin pie spice muffin recipe my housemate & I thought up.

Basic Muffins

The creator’s suggestion is to freeze them and grab one in the morning as breakfast.
Makes: 12 large muffins.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup apple sauce (use the kind that doesn’t show sugar / corn syrup in the ingredients list)
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup water*
   
• 3 cups wheat bran (available at most natural foods stores – I get mine at the co-op on Broad)
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup loose packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
   
• 1 cup fresh fruit or 1/2 cup dried fruit, pre-soaked