Fig and Almond Cake

I recently bought a fig and almond cake to use as an appetizer, and it made a delicious snack. I imagine it would be fairly simple to recreate, and sure enough, a recipe is available on the internets.

The ingredients are simple:

• 8 ounces dried black mission figs, stemmed and cut in half
• 1/4 cup raw almonds 
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• a sprinkle of water, if needed

Simple instructions also:

1. Place the almonds in the food processor and pulse several times until they’re coarsely chopped. 
2. Add the figs and cinnamon and pulse again until the mixture comes together like a shaggy dough. 
3.  If your figs are really dry they might need a sprinkle of water. 
4. Line a shallow dish about 5 inches in diameter with plastic wrap and press the fig and almond mixture firmly into the dish. 
5. Place a small, flat plate or a small dish with a flat bottom on top of the mixture and set a can on top to further compress the cake. 
6. Let sit uncovered at room temperature for a day or two to dry.

Spinach!

A recent New York Times blog post reminds me to cook more with spinach. It reminds me of the spinach souffle, and points to a variety of good looking recipes:

• Garlic Soup with Spinach
• Penne with Mushroom Ragout and Spinach
• Spinach Sardine and Rice Gratin
• Spinach and Millet Timbale

I definitely want to make some spinach soups, spinach-focused pasta, and some spinachy baked dishes this winter.

Smitten Kitchen and 101 cookbooks offer some more ideas:

• The Best Baked Spinach
• Spinach Rice Gratin from 101 Cookbooks

Steve's Favorite Waffles

Steve's favorite waffle recipe was published in the New York Times in the '80s, and we often find ourselves hunting for the recipe. We've found it again, so here it is:

Gaufres (French waffles)

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups milk
• Salt to taste, if desired
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 6 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup heavy cream

Preparation

1. Heat one cup of the milk in a saucepan, and add the salt and butter. Bring to the simmer. Remove from the heat.
2. Add the flour immediately, beating constantly with a wire whisk.
3. Return the mixture to the heat, stirring constantly until mixture comes away from the sides of the bowl. Pour the mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer and start beating on low speed. Add two eggs at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the remaining milk and the cream. This will produce a thin, lumpy batter.
4. Add the mixture, an appropriate amount at a time, to the surface of an electric waffle iron. The volume will depend on the size of the iron. Cover and cook according to the manufacturer's instructions.

YIELD

Four to 14 waffles, depending on the size of the waffle iron

Originally published with FOOD; MEMORIES OF WAFFLES
By Craig Claiborne; Pierre Franey, May 22, 1983
 

Apple Crumble

One of my favorite springtime dessert recipes is strawberry-rhubarb crumble from the smitten kitchen blog. I don't really share her feelings about proper proportions of fruit and topping, so I typically fill a 9x13 pan with fruit, and cover it with a single batch of the topping. I've always left out the Demerara sugar because it's sweet enough without, and I'm too lazy to buy some. I like to mix some oats into the topping for some extra texture, and replacing the flour with a combination of ground almond meal and teff flour can give some interesting flavors.

Here is the basic topping recipe:

• 1 1/3 cup flour, or a mixture of teff flour, almond flour, and oats
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• Zest of one lemon
• 1/4 pound (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted 

Combine dry ingredients, then add the melted butter and mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

I have had some success converting this recipe to an apple crumble, adding vanilla, cinnamon, a little sugar, the lemon juice, and some cornstarch into the apples. The teff, almond flour, and oats are particularly appealing in this case, and the lemon zest still adds a delicious touch. 

Walnut and Pecan Pate

At Christmas time, we often have enjoyed vegan walnut and pecan pate from the Wedge co-op. It's delicious, and it would be nice to be able to have it sometimes when we're not in Minneapolis. Hopefully one of these recipes will do the trick:

• Fig & Fork recipe without tofu
• Outpost recipe with tofu 

 The original recipe includes tofu, so I'm tempted to try the Outpost recipe first:

• 1 3/4 cups walnuts
• 3/4 cup pecans
• 1/4 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 1/2 pounds plain, firm tofu
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup tamari soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped

Finely puree all ingredients except the parsley in the food processor, then mix in the parsley.

Hot Sauce

This page was my inspiration for hot sauce this summer, when we were getting massive amounts of hot peppers in the farmshare:

http://www.pepperjoe.com/hot-pepper-sauce/

 I think I tried to approximately follow the middle recipe, ignoring what varieties of peppers I had:

PEPPER JOE'S ISLAND HOT SAUCE
(A 10 ON THE PEPPER JOE HEAT SCALE)

---

- 12 habanero peppers
- 2 carrots
- 1 lg. onion
- 6 cloves of garlic
-1/2 tbs. salt
-1/4 tbs. white pepper
- 1 lime
- 8 tbs. white vinegar
Cut habanero peppers in half and remove seeds. Drop in boiling water for 30 seconds to blanche.(handle with care) Remove peppers and put onion, carrots and garlic cloves into boiling water and cook until tender. Squeeze juice from lime and combine all ingredients and put in blender. First chop, then blend at high speed. done! Just put in wide-mouth jar and store in fridge. Spoon out this hot sauce as needed. Delicious on cheesesteaks, hamburgers, pizza, or added to soups, chili, tomato sauce. Also can scrub garage floors.

I also skipped annoying blanching steps, and instead threw everything into the blender after cutting the stems off. I used a large white onion, and maybe I'm a little sad about how vinegary it turned out. It works really well in some dishes, and pretty poorly in others. Surprisingly, it turns out to be a fantastic addition to scrambled eggs. I guess eggs go really well with the combination of a little heat, and a lot of onion and garlic, and they cover the vinegar really well.

Butternut Squash Apple Soup, and future ideas

I'm really excited about a few recent additions to my life:

1. An immersion blender
2. A fancy rice cooker
3. The realization that grating a butternut squash in a food-processor works really well

I'd like to try to eat more lentils and more wild rice. Here are a few recipe ideas we should try out soon:

1. Creamy Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
2. Gingery Butternut and Red Lentil Soup
3. Red Lentil Soup from 101 Cookbooks

We recently had some success following Simply Recipes' version of Butternut Squash Apple Soup:
We started by sautéeing onions, leaving out celery and carrots for convenience, then threw in a lot of grated butternut squash, along with a roughly chopped granny smith apple and some vegetable broth. We dumped in a fair amount of salt, sage, rosemary, and thyme, along with some of our hot sauce from this summer, and a can of cannelini beans. After letting it stew for a while, we puréed it with the immersion blender. We didn't end up following the original recipe very closely, but it turned out pretty well.