March « 2011 « Goth Panda

March 31, 2011

Pasta e Fagioli

This soup is not very photogenic, but it is delicious, quick, and inexpensive. I combined a few different recipes to make it, since I have a very strict idea about what to put in pasta e fagioli: pasta. E fagioli. And then seasonings. Some of the recipes I saw added all different kinds of vegetables, and I have nothing against vegetables. I like lots of veggies in minestrone and other vegetable soups. But I think that pasta e fagioli should be as simple as possible. This also has the added bonus of making it a pantry meal.

One of the recipes I found while researching pasta e fagioli made it like a pasta dish. They cooked the pasta separately, and made the rest of the ingredients a tomato and bean sauce that was served on top the pasta. I thought that was an interesting take, but in the end I decided to stick with a soup presentation.

I left this soup on the stove for about 20 minutes and it got nice and thick, which is the way I wanted it. I cooked the pasta in the soup to make it thicker, but you could also cook the pasta separately and add it in at the end.

Pasta e Fagioli

Serves 4-6.

2 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 15 oz cans cannellini beans
1 15 oz can tomato sauce, no salt (if you use salted, just add less salt later on)
2 c No-Chicken or vegetable broth
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning blend
1 c dry pasta (I used the traditional ditalini)

Rinse and drain the cannellini beans. Add half of them to a blender with 1 cup water and puree until smooth. Keep the other half whole.

Heat olive oil in a 4 qt soup or sauce pot over medium heat. Add the garlic and fry for about minute, until fragrant but not brown. Add tomato sauce, pureed beans, broth, and whole beans. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add salt and Italian seasoning, taste, and correct seasoning.

Add the pasta and cook partially covered for 10-15 minutes, until the pasta is tender. If you would like the soup thicker, leave it uncovered and simmer for longer. If it gets too dry, add water.

Filed under: Quick Vegetarian Dinners

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March 29, 2011

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Yes, the muffin obsession continues! I originally planned to make lemon poppy seed muffins before the chocolate muffins, but I was hindered by not having either lemons or sour cream. It is kind of hard to make lemon poppy seed muffins without lemons. I did have the poppy seeds! But still.

These were just as easy and delicious as the other Dorie Greenspan recipes I have made recently. I didn’t bother to make the icing because I didn’t want them too sweet, and they still had plenty of lemon flavor. They stayed moist and delicious until we ate them all, but that really doesn’t prove much since we ate them pretty quickly.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

From Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
12 muffins

2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 cups all purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 t pure vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 T poppy seeds

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2-3 T fresh lemon juice

To Make the Muffins:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and the lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of the lemon strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough-a few lumps are better than over mixing the batter. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Cool the muffins completely on the rack before icing them.

To Make the Icing:
Put the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl and add about 1 1/2 T of the lemon juice. Stir with a spoon to moisten the sugar, then add enough additional lemon juice, a dribble at a time, to get an icing that is thin enough to drizzle from the tip of the spoon. You can then drizzle lines of icing over the tops of the muffins or coat the tops entirely, the better to get an extra zap of lemon.

Filed under: Breakfast

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March 22, 2011

Cast-Iron Pizza

I first tried making pizza on cast iron last fall, when it got too cold to use the outdoor grill. Cast iron holds a lot more heat than even a baking stone, so if you preheat the oven with the cast iron inside for a while, you can get higher temperatures for baking pizza. And high temperatures are the best thing for pizza, for the most part much higher than home ovens can ever achieve.

I started by baking smaller pizzas in my cast iron skillet, but after I was converted to the technique, I bought this:

Not only does it allow for larger size pizzas, but the flat design makes it easier to slide the pizzas on top without making a mess. I also always press my pizza dough out and bake it on parchment paper in order to avoid the collapse of a beautifully decorated pizza into a pile of toppings, sauce, and dough. I don’t trust that I will be able to make them slide off the peel with just cornmeal to assist.

I use the same dough that I used to make grilled pizza last summer.

I turn on the oven to start preheating the cast iron pan about 45-60 minutes before I want to start baking the dough. I press the dough into circles on the parchment and prick them with a fork to discourage bubbles. Then I parbake them for six minutes.

At that point, I take the dough out and top it. One of these is plain sauce and cheese and one has also sundried tomatoes. I also sprinkle some Pizza Seasoning on top. Then I put them back in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

I am glad I have my baking stone because I still think it is the best for baking bread on. But I think the cast iron technique gives you a better pizza crust, especially in the winter when grilling is out of the question. I can’t wait for warmer weather to start grilling my pizzas again, though.

Filed under: Not-So-Quick Vegetarian Dinners

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March 18, 2011

Cheddar, Parmesan, and Cracked Pepper Scones

I liked the looks of these savory scones as soon as Nicole at Pinch My Salt posted them.

The only changes I made to the recipe were to adapt my Buttermilk Biscuit techniques of grating the butter in the food processor (which I then handily used to grate the cheddar) and using a water spritzer since my dough was very dry. I also left out the hot sauce and smoked paprika, because although I was pretty sure I would like them, I was also pretty sure that Mike wouldn’t. I didn’t bother reserving some parmigiano for topping, and just mixed all of the cheese into the dough.

I also made these as eight full-size scones instead of 16 mini scones. This is because (as I said) my dough was very dry, and it took a few turns of spritzing it with water and folding it to get it to pull together into a cohesive dough. I was worried that I was working the dough too much, so I thought I would just stick with one dough wheel instead of separating the dough and reshaping it to make two.

These were delicious the night I baked them, but sadly scones and biscuits don’t stay good for long. This just means you should be excused for eating them all up right away. Just look at those cheesy, flaky layers!

Cheddar, Parmesan, and Cracked Pepper Scones

Adapted from Pinch My Salt

Yield: 8 full-size scones or 16 mini-scones.

1 1/4 cups cake flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 cup (one stick or 1/4 pound) cold unsalted butter, grated
1/2 cup shredded aged cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Parmigiano Reggiano
1/2 cup cold buttermilk
1 large egg

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pepper, and ground mustard. Stir the grated butter into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the shredded cheddar and parmesan.

3. In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together buttermilk and egg. Pour buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon just until a ball of dough comes together. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surfaced and knead a couple of times (using a bit of flour if the dough is too sticky or spritzing with a water bottle if it is too dry) just to bring the dough together.

4. For mini-scones, cut the dough into two equal pieces; for regular sized scones, do not divide. Flatten the dough into a circle, about 1″ thick. Cut the circle into 8 triangles and move them to a parchment-lined baking sheet.

5. Bake scones in a preheated 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes for mini-scones and 25 minutes for full-sized scones, or until golden brown along the edges. Let cool on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes before eating. Enjoy warm or at room temperature.

Filed under: Breakfast

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March 16, 2011

Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk Muffins

So I think I mentioned in my post about Chocolate Chip cookies that I am not a fan of semi-sweet or bittersweet or dark chocolate, or anything in which the chocolate is not balanced by a goodly amount of sugar. I would actually rather have no chocolate bar than a dark chocolate bar. But the one place where I do prefer semi-sweet chocolate is in a good chocolate muffin. I avoided chocolate muffins for a long time, thinking that they would just be a pale imitation of a chocolate cupcake. But since I first tried one, I have grown fond of chocolate muffins on their own terms: not sweet and rich like a cupcake, but moist and light. And semi-sweet chips offset that perfectly in my opinion. Somehow milk chocolate would not do.

This is the second Dorie Greenspan muffin recipe I have tried, and if all of the recipes are as good as these simple muffin recipes, I can see why her books are so popular. The only thing I changed is that I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet because that’s what I had. I read on the internet that you could interchange the two, except for semi-sweet would be a little sweeter, and let’s face it, for me that is almost never a bad thing. In the future I might use the ready made chips or chunks instead of having to chop my own. It wasn’t a big deal for the pieces that got melted with the butter, but I think the ones that got stirred into the muffins were too big. But I quickly got sick of chopping them, so they were probably not as small as they could have been. I think I also needed to bake these longer to get them thoroughly done, maybe 5 minutes more than the recipe says.

Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk Muffins

From Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan via Epicurious

Yield: Makes 12 muffins

3/4 of a stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used semi-sweet)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 large egg
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Melt the butter and half the chopped chocolate together in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water; or do this in a microwave. Remove from the heat.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, egg and vanilla extract together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients and the melted butter and chocolate over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough—a few lumps are better than overmixing the batter. Stir in the remaining chopped chocolate. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin molds.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Filed under: Breakfast

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