Rhubarb Muffins

Rhubarb is one of those vegetables that can be tricky to work with, but is really rewarding. After our current supply had been all but used up, we decided to use the last remnants to make some muffins. Muffins are awesome.

Ingredients 

For our muffins we needed a cup and a half of flour, half a teaspoon each of baking soda and salt, three-quarters cup of brown sugar, half a cup of buttermilk — or use sour milk, or milk mixed with a half-tablespoon of lemon juice — three-quarters cup of vegetable oil, an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, and half a cup of chopped nuts.

To this we added the last of our rhubarb, one cup's worth chopped.

Topping

We're going to use a topping made from a quarter cup each of brown sugar, chopped nuts, and oats, and a half-teaspoon of cinnamon.

Cookin'

After preheating the oven to 325 and greasing up the muffin pan (we use a 6 large pan, but a 12 small works too), we combined the flour, soda, and salt, then added brown sugar, buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla. This was mixed together until it was moist, and then we stirred in the rhubarb and nuts.

The batter was scooped into the tray, and then sprinkled with the topping we prepared earlier. After about half-an-hour our muffins were done.

Diagnosis: Delicious

The muffins came out moist and sweet, with just a bit of tang from the rhubarb. Definitely a recipe worth keeping around and making again the next time we get our hands on some rhubarb.

Processed vs. Whole Foods: Well, I feel validated...

I had a new awareness: it made no sense, in evolutionary terms, to eat things that weren't actually food and expect our bodies to still react in a normal fashion.

I wrote that, so discovering the following video wasn't exactly surprising, really, but it was horrifying.

Stefani Bardin is a TEDxManhattan 2011 Fellow, who conducted small clinical trials using pill cameras to demonstrate how our digestive system reacts differently to processed versus unprocessed foods.  Pay particular attention to her narration, where she explains that some of the ingredients in the processed foods are petrochemicals – that's right, stuff derived from crude oil.

No wonder we can't digest it properly.  See for yourself:

What price do we pay for convenience? Not only do we develop attitudes that cooking is a chore (when it actually can be a part of the social and enjoyment experience of food), but what exactly happens when we absorb petrochemicals instead of nutrients?

Sweet White Wine Tomato Sauce – Guest Post by Zach Lome

The following is a guest post offered to us by Zach Lome. - MCoorlim

Sweet White Wine Tomato Sauce

Hi everyone! I’d like to start out by extending a big thanks to Food In My Food for allowing me to write a guest post. I’ve been friends with Michael for a long time, and I’ve been a food snob for just as long, so when he first started this blog I flipped my metaphorical lid in joy that he and Kat were doing things I wanted to do. As you all may know, they’ve got a natural hand in making cool food and keeping things nice and succinct here, so when Michael asked me to do this post I a.) panicked and b.) got excited, because succinctness is quite frankly not my strong suit. I envisioned a large three-course meal, all from scratch, with multiple tools in use and all sorts of crazy stuff. Luckily, laziness and a busy schedule won out and I landed on the following simple tomato sauce.

It’s All In The Mirepoix

The history of this sauce is pretty boring. I was trying to eat healthier and couldn’t continue to make Alfredo (my go-to sauce), but regular tomato sauce was too boring to me. I crave a variety of texture and flavor in all things i do. I had made a decent tomato sauce recently using cream cheese and roasted red peppers, and while I liked the creaminess I was looking for something chunky to go with tagliatelle or cavatappi, but knew I wanted to keep the roasted red peppers for sure. At this point I stumbled on an unrelated recipe that involved mirepoix, and I knew I had to use this. It’s as simple as can be: a 2:1:1 mix of onion, celery, and carrots.

While picking up the carrots and celery I also nabbed some nicy spicy italian sausage and knew that this was going to go in my dish, which meant I wanted a sauce that would complement the heat from the meat well enough. I grabbed some white wine and made sure to use vidalia (sweet) onions for the mirepoix. This meant I had 3 key sweet ingredients: white wine, red peppers, and sweet onions. From there I just... winged it. And thus this recipe.

Just Throw It In And Wait

History lesson over. This time I didn’t have any sausage, but the sauce is really chunky and sweet and savory and it goes perfectly well on its own. Cooking it is real simple. I made the mirepoix, 2 cups worth, and sweated it in a large saucepan with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil for about 6 minutes. When that was done I threw in the roasted red pepper and garlic (I roasted the peppers myself this time, but just used a jar last time. Both work just fine). At this point you’re supposed to put in tomato paste to up the savory-factor, but I was a butt and had forgotten. The sauce still turned out alright. After stirring everything up nice and fine for a few minutes I poured in white wine until it just barely covered all of the vegetables. Note that this is a lot of wine and can probably be reduced.

Finally, after another minute or so, I dumped in my can of crushed tomatoes and started spicing with the dried seasonings. I kept the heat on medium/medium high for about half an hour uncovered – I really wanted to reduce all the white wine so the resulting sauce would be properly chunky and not thin. Before serving I added a bunch of parsley for color and a splash of lemon juice for flavor.

Ingredients

I know Michael and Kat don’t usually spit out a list of ingredients in their posts, but I figured that, what the hell, this is my show today, so here you all go:

• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
• 1 cup finely chopped sweet onion
• 2~3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp tomato paste
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 or 2 roasted red bell peppers
• 1/4 ~ 1/2 cup good white wine (I didn't measure, precisely)
• 1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
• dried basil, dried oregano, crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper to taste, fresh parsley

All you gotta do is combine these goodies and you’re set! For a sauce like this a broad noodle or a spiral noodle are your best choices; this time I went with a cavatappi. Tubes aren’t the best because a lot of the chunks are too large to get caught inside the tubes. It’s perfect with fresh-grated parmigiana on top and goes well with sausage, particularly spicy sausage, but is also good on its own.

Bon Appetit!

Eggnog & Brandy Balls

Holiday Brandy-stravagansa

I don't know about you, but for me holidays can be stressful times. Traveling to be with your loved ones, being with your loved ones, having to talk to your loved ones — all of these things are leading stressors that, when combined with the general blahs of a season without the sun, can really depress people.

Nothing cures depression like a depressant! If we have to spend our time in unpleasant familial obligations, we might as well get smashed.

Eggnog? More like Yay-gnog!

Because what are the holdiays if not an excuse to drink?

Okay, I'm playing up the booze angle here a bit but let me be frank: I effing love eggnog. No lie. Every year the delicious reappearance of eggnog has always been the high point of the holiday season. I even love the non-alcoholic kind you can buy in stores. For years this was my favorite seasonal drink.

Homemade eggnog blows that processed stuff out of the water.

Putting the Egg in Eggnog

We used four eggs in our nog, beating 1/3 cup of sugar into the yolks and putting the whites aside. The base was two cups of whole milk and a cup of half-and-half (though you can use anything up to heavy cream) seasoned with a teaspoon of nutmeg. Some people don't bother cooking their eggnog, but it's a general good practice whenever you're doing anything with eggs — Rocky Balboa notwithstanding.

We brought the milk mixture to a quick boil and combined it with the yolk-sugar. The trick is to to pour the hot milk into the yolks (not the other way around!) slowly enough to avoid accidentally cooking the yolks — something that would be pretty unpleasant. After you've combined the milk and eggs you'll want to slowly raise the temperature back to 160 F.

We used half a cup of brandy, but you could easily substitute rum. Not adding booze is an affront to Saint Nick. Set the whole thing into the fridge to just chill for a bit — a few hours will do the trick.

While the milk/yolk/booze is chilling you're going to want to whip the egg whites with an electric beater until they form soft peaks. Gradually add another tablespoon of sugar and keep beating until stiff peaks have formed. Once the milk/yolk/booze is cold, whisk the meringue into the milk mixture.

Chill With the Eggnog Already

Don't make the same mistake we did. After the whisking your eggnog will still be separated. If you drink it now, you'll have this weird head on top of watery nog that is still okay, but not great. We let the rest of it sit overnight, and discovered that it settled into an amazing drink if you just leave it alone for awhile. It was fresh, creamy, thick, and best of all, delicious.

Wrap Your Lips Around These Brandy Balls

Fun Fact: You can raise your blood alcohol level without drinking. Many recipes call for various amounts of potent alcohol, and not all of them burn off the "get you drunk" bits when cooking. For good reason, many of these sorts of recipes are used and consumed during the holidays.

Chocolate brandy balls are really good, and really strong.

Kill the Wabbit

This is another recipe that you can substitute rum for the brandy — if you're a complete philistine. The chocolate part of our brandy balls comes from crushed chocolate wafers. You're free to use vanilla wafers instead — if you're a total racist. We couldn't find the exact sort we wanted at the store, so we actually used some chocolate graham-cracker rabbit things, and it worked out just fine.

Anyway, you need chocolate crumbs, so we basically threw two-and-a-half cups of the rabbits into a ziplock bag and I wailed on them with the bottom of the measuring cup until they were all smashed up good. I'm good at the smashing.

Gently Roll Them In Your Hands

We also nuked a cup of chocolate chips until they were melted as a base, and into that we mixed the rabbit crumbs, 3 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1/2 cup of sugar, a cup of chopped nuts, and 1/2 cup of brandy. After chilling this stuff for about an hour, we hand rolled teaspoon-sized portions of this mixture into balls, then rolled the balls through a bowl of sugar to coat them.

Chill With the Balls Already

Now, maybe you have more patience than I do. Maybe you're a goddamn perfectionist saint. Maybe you can resist the allure of these delicious and potent chocolate morsels — if you can, you're a better man than I. Ideally you want to put the balls in an airtight container and chill them for from a few days to a few weeks to let them age — apparently, they only get better and better. I can't say, because Kat and I ate them all the next day, and they were pretty damn good.

Indian Tomato Lentil Stew

Improvisational Meal Planning

While you can certainly make it a point to decide what you're going to be eating for every meal every week, most people are fairly casual in their meal planning. A mood grips them, or fails to grip them, and they decide that to make dinner on an impulse out of whatever they happen to have around the home. Certain foods lend themselves well to that sort of improvisational meal planning, and Indian Tomato Lentil Stew is one of them.

Indian Tomato Lentil Stew

Stews in general make great improvisational meals. You can vary the ingredients depending on what vegetables are on hand, and switch up the quantity based on what you feel like eating. As such, please see the following as more of a guideline than a rule - stews are very personal meals.

We started by sauteing an onion, a spicy pepper, and three minced cloves of garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil. We added this saute into three cups of water, along with a cup of chopped tomato and a cup of dried red lentils. The mixture was brought to a boil and then simmered until the lentils grew tender, which took us about an hour.

The Spice WILL Flow

After we were done simmering we added spices. Again, these can be adjusted to taste, but we used 3/4 teaspoon of turmeric, 3/4 teaspoon of ground cumin, and a half teaspoon of ground ginger. For color we added a cup of peas, and let the spices permeate and blend for another five minutes.



We served the stew over a bed of brown rice. The result was delicious and spicy, though if you wanted a bit more you are free to season with salt and fresh ground black pepper, though for the most part that's unnecessary.

Chiles Rellenos

Or, How to Stuff a Pepper

Chiles Rellenos is a pretty simple recipe. The stuffing is made out of cooked brown rice, peas, corn, and mushrooms from the farmer's market stir-fried together with the same Apple Barbecue sauce we used in our No-Meat Loaf, and a little crumbled goat-cheese.

This is just one possible stuffing; you can pretty much just make it up as you go along. Quinoa and veggies works just as well, or salsa and cheese.

Packing the Peppers

Cut the stem off of a poblano pepper and scoop out the seeds, then stuff the rice mixture inside. Roast it in the oven until the pepper is tender, which is about 20 or 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

The side we've got pictured to the left are Dragon Tongue beans, steamed 10 minutes then tossed with a little olive oil, sea salt, and fresh ground pepper.

The result? A very balanced meal with just a bit of heat from the pepper, a touch of sweet from the apple barbecue sauce, a little tang from the goat cheese, all combining to complement the savory of the rice and veggies. Perfect.

No-Meat Vegetarian Loaf

 I, personally, am not a vegetarian. I'm an omnivore. I eat meat. Not a lot, mind you – since my girlfriend is a vegetarian, I rarely if ever eat any at all these days. I suppose a better way to put it might be to say that while my diet is chiefly vegetarian, I myself am not. I don't really miss eating meat, and the less I eat the less I crave it, particularly when there are meat-ish dishes like this available.

This vegetarian meatless-loaf is healthy, hearty, and delicious. We use, as in most of our recipes, locally sourced ingredients. The base for our loaf is firm tofu purchased from Phoenix Bean. I never really liked tofu as a kid, but after tasting some of their demos at the farmer's market, they've really grown on me. We're also using previously cooked brown rice, bread crumbs, and shredded vegetables – a carrot, a beet, a small onion, and a jalapeno for a little kick, but you can basically use whatever veggies you have on hand. We're also mixing in chopped walnuts, and a few spices – garlic (or Dijon) mustard, soy sauce, and a few grinds of black pepper.

We're going to use barbecue sauce, both in the mix and atop the loaf. In this case we went with a surprisingly delicious apple barbecue from Hillside Orchards. Yes, we get a lot of good stuff from them.

Preparations for No-Meat Vegetarian Loaf

Preheat the oven to 350. While it's warming up, blend 16 ounces of tofu with a mixer until its achieved a smooth consistency, and mix in the spices – we used 2 tsp of the garlic mustard, 3 tsp of soy sauce, a quarter cup of the barbecue sauce, and just a few grinds of black pepper. You'll want to mix the chopped vegetables (one of each), walnuts (a cup), bread crumbs (2 cups), and brown rice (1 cup) together in a separate bowl.

Messy Fun – Without the Meat!

This is the fun part. Or the gross part. Probably a little bit of both, depending on your individual predilections. You're going to dump the vegetable mix into the tofu, and sort of squelch it all together with your hands, like you're making mud pies. This is messy. And cold. But it's gotta be done, so enjoy having your hands wrist deep in food that you're going to be serving later. I really wish I didn't have to remind you to wash your hands, but... yeah. Wash your hands first. And after.

Cooking the Meatless Loaf

Grease yourself up a baking pan, pack your goop into it, and top with a layer of barbecue sauce. Bake that sucker for an hour, and let it stand for about ten to fifteen minutes afterwards before serving.

What you end up with is a firm loaf of tofu, rice, and veggies that's good for you and very filling. The fact that it tastes great doesn't hurt too much either.

Bonus Round: Potatoes

As a side dish we cut some potatoes up into chunks and tossed them with olive oil, salt, and herbs (sage and rosemary, but you can use whatever). We let them bake on a baking sheet while the loaf was baking. Man, I love me some potatoes.

Do I miss meat? Heck, most days I don't even remember that I'm not eating any! What about you, readers? Have you gone vegetarian, or thought about it? Has it been difficult for you to make the transition?

By Michael Coorlim