New Favorite: Sweet Potato Pecan Burgers

So, I'm back. I have a new baby and a new recipe. Life has been hectic, of course, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking. Pre-baby I spent days in the kitchen making meals to store in the freezer and post-baby I spend less time in the kitchen, while still trying to make healthy meals. I rely a lot of our favorite "go-to" meals, and I'm going to try to post those here interspersed with recipes from classic cookbooks.

This recipe for Sweet Potato Pecan Burgers is from Cooking Light, though if you wander over to that sight you will find the reviewers mostly found it mushy and not tasty. I disagree. My husband and I both really like this and I have made it twice in the last month. I don't know that the caramelized onions are necessary but they are a nice addition to the burger. This is a new favorite in our house and will be added to the regular rotation. I hope you enjoy them!

Sweet Potato Pecan Burgers
This is from Cooking Light. I changed the recipe a bit, including microwaving the sweet potatoes instead of boiling them and greatly reducing the amount of onion from 2 1/2 cups to 1 cup.

Onions
1 tsp canola oil
3 cups sliced onion
2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar
dash salt

Burgers
2 1/2 cups sweet potato
cooking spray
1 cup chopped onion
3 garlic cloves
1 cup regular oats
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1 Tbs canola oil, divided
lettuce leaves
6 whole grain buns
chili sauce

To prepare onions, heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add sliced onion to pan; sauté 12 minutes or until browned, stirring occasionally. Stir in vinegar, sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon salt; cook 30 seconds or until vinegar is absorbed. Remove onion mixture from pan; keep warm. Wipe pan dry with a paper towel.

To prepare burgers, microwave sweet potatoes until cooked through (about 8 minutes). Take the skin off and discard. Mash sweet potatoes. Heat large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chopped onion and garlic to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until tender. Place potato, chopped onion mixture, oats, cumin, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a food processor; process until smooth. Place potato mixture in a large bowl; stir in nuts. Divide potato mixture into 6 equal portions, shaping each into a 1/2-inch-thick patty.

Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add 3 patties to pan; cook 4 minutes or until browned. Carefully turn patties over; cook 3 minutes or until browned. Remove from pan; keep warm. Repeat procedure with remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil and 3 patties. Place lettuce leaves and patties on bottom halves of buns; top each patty with 1 tablespoon chili sauce, about 3 tablespoons onion, and top halves of buns.

Peach Muffins: A Snapshot of Excess

"Nature's candy in my hand or can or a pie
Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free"

Peaches, by The Presidents of the United States of America

Peaches slipped from our hands into an overflowing half bushel box at The Homestead Farm and it didn't really feel like millions of peaches. The air was surprisingly humidity free, the sky was clear, as we walked through yellow and white peach orchards with a couple friends of ours talking about local food and less noble things, and eating and picking peaches. But come this morning, when faced with dozens and dozens of peaches (not to mention the many pounds of blackberries we picked, and the 8 pounds of tomatoes, 5 pounds of zucchini, 4 pounds of cucumbers, and assorted other produce from our CSA) it sure felt like millions of peaches.

I wasn't quite sure of my plan of attack, having some vague idea that peaches could be frozen and I could bake with some and we would certainly just eat some of them. There are directions for freezing peaches online and it is surprisingly easy. Still, after hours of boiling, skinning, chopping, coating in lemon juice, and mixing with syrup it didn't feel so easy. And my kitchen was covered with peach bits and skins and juice, like a peach volcano had exploded from the sink.

After getting a few pounds of tomatoes, blackberries, and half a bushel of peaches in the freezer, I still had 20 or so peaches staring at me. And while it was satisfying to see the produce in the freezer and dream of the cold winter day when we will have a taste of summer on our plates, it was impossible for me to leave the kitchen without having made something to eat. Enter super simple peach muffins from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

Peach Muffins
These muffins are from the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, and are a variation on the basic muffin recipe. The recipe calls for pastry flour, but I substituted whole wheat pastry flour (also called graham flour) since that is what I had on hand. Instead of melted butter, I used canola oil and used soymilk instead of milk. I am the substitution queen and while that may sound like cheating since I am not following the original recipe, I believe it is in the spirit of early cooks who were more likely to use what was on hand than chasing down ingredients. The range of recommended sugar depends on what you are adding to it; I used about 1/4 cup of sugar with good results.

2 cups pastry flour
3 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs to 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk
4 Tbs melted butter
1 egg
1 cup peeled and chopped peaches

Preheat oven to 400. Grease muffin tin (12 regular or 24 small). Mix and sift dry ingredients together. Beat together milk, butter, and egg. Mix wet ingredients into dry until just moist. Gently mix in peaches. Bake 15 to 20 minutes.

Frugal Graham Flour Muffins

You aren't going to believe this recipe. Water, sweetener, and flour. That's it.

Now, admittedly, I didn't follow the recipe exactly because I don't have iron gem pans like those found here so I just used regular muffin pans. I'm sure I didn't get the crisp outside that I could have otherwise. And because there is no temperature recommendation in the cookbook I basically made that up. Oh, and there is no time recommendation so I made that up, too.

Do you see where this is heading? The only reason you need this so-called recipe is to free yourself from needing a recipe at all. Forget what you have learned about needing a delicate balance of salt and baking soda and flour and liquid, just try whatever you have on hand. At least, that is the spirit of this cookbook and thrifty, creative cooks of yore.

There is a trade-off, of course. Be warned: these gems are heavy and have a dense crumb. But the graham flour has a nice flavor, and they pair nicely with sweet and savory. Trying spreading them with butter and preserves or crumble over soup.

Hygienic Graham Gems
Adapted from Three Meals a Day: Cooking, Table, Toilet, Health circa 1890. This recipe calls for graham flour which I happen to have because I am singlehandedly trying to keep King Arthur Flour in business. If you don't have graham flour, try substituting just about any whole grain flour. The recipe specifically recommends against using salt.

1 pint tepid water
1 Tbs molasses
Graham flour (whole wheat pastry flour)

Preheat oven to 400. Butter a 12 cup muffin tin. Add enough flour to the water and molasses to make a thick batter. Bake for 15 minutes.

Easy Oatmeal Cookies

Alternate titles for this post:

Oatmeal Cookies Now
Just a Few Oatmeal Cookies
I Want an Easy, Small Batch of Oatmeal Cookies Now

Get it? This is a quick and easy recipe and it makes a nice small batch of cookies perfect for after dinner or when someone stops by unexpectedly. You probably have everything you need to make these and they make a good base for additions like nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, or currants.

This recipe for Oatmeal Crisps comes from the Rumford Complete Cookbook, Revised, 1940. This cookbook belonged to my husband's grandmother and it was given to me rather unceremoniously by my mother-in-law. During our holiday visit she pointed to it on the kitchen island and said, "Do you want that? It was my mom's."

I was very lucky to have met my husband's grandmother and I loved her brutal honesty: she adored my husband but wasn't afraid to point out--over and over and over--how big his head was when he was a little boy. She was charming and sharp, and I have great memories of her on a long car trip buying surfer sunglasses at a gas station and wearing them all the way home.

This cookbook is really straightforward with standard recipes for the kinds of food that can be cooked day to day. This cookie recipe is the simplest recipe I've ever seen without fancy ingredients like fancy shmancy vanilla extract or spices or anything. It's fat and flour and oatmeal and a couple other things to hold it all together. You can fiddle with the recipe a bit depending on what you have around or what you like, but I think this is evidence that you can strip away all but the essential ingredients and turn out a fine dessert.

Oatmeal Crisps

Adapted from the Rumford Complete Cookbook, Revised, 1940. I added cinnamon and used about half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. The cookies I made are not crispy at all so either I didn't cook them long enough or they just soaked up the moisture from all the rain we're getting. The recipe calls for a little milk if needed and I did end up adding about a tablespoon or so to hold the dough together. I can't emphasize enough that you need to use aluminum free baking powder like this one because with the 2 tsps in this cookie it may not taste right with standard baking powder.

3/4 cup flour
1/3 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 small egg
A little milk, if needed

Heat oven to 350. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. Stir in the butter; the batter may be a little crumbly like biscuit dough. Add the sugar and oatmeal. Mix in the egg and a little milk, if necessary to hold the dough together. Drop dough by the teaspoonful onto a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake about 12 minutes.

When the Sun's Comin' Up, Got Cakes on the Griddle...

2008 is going to be a good year, or at least one filled with new classic recipes. My family and friends were kind to me this Christmas, giving me many classic cookbooks and you are going to be introduced to a lot of new ones in the coming days and weeks. But we'll start with a classic recipe for griddle cakes from a truly classic cookbook, Three Meals a Day: Cooking, Table, Toilet, Health. As the title suggests, this book is more than just recipes. If you're like my husband you'll ask the whole car ride home, "TOILET?! What does that have to do with cooking? TOILET!?" But you're not like my husband, so I trust you'll just enjoy this recipe and look forward to reading excerpts from it in the future.

This copy of Three Meals was given to me by a friend (she's my husband's boss, too, so shouldn't we be the ones giving her super cool gifts?). She collects classic Spanish and French primers and travel books, but for some reason picked this book up years ago. She wrote a very kind note about the book and how she never quite understood why she bought it. I'm glad she held onto it, because it is an amazing gift an an amazing book.

I always thought griddle cakes were the same thing as pancakes, but these definitely aren't the pancakes I know. The recipe says they are light and fluffy but, well, they aren't. They are rather heavy, but they do puff up quite a bit. You can see from the list of ingredients that there aren't any eggs or sweetener, and the only fat is from the buttermilk, but the corn meal provides a certain amount of sweetness and different texture. I just put a little maple syrup on mine, as you can see in the picture above, but my husband topped his with peanut butter and apple butter and a little syrup, he was shocked, shocked I tell you, that after eating six (!!) of these that he felt full most of the day. The cakes are large enough that you can cut them in half and toast them like an English muffin. Yum.

Griddle Cakes
Adapted from Three Meals a Day: Cooking, Table, Toilet, Health, sometime in the 1890's. I cut the recipe in half and it made about 12 good size cakes. The batter is really, really thick, so you can add more water and they will be more pancake like, bubbling up when they are done on one side. The thick batter can be scooped onto the griddle using an ice cream scoop and cooked at a lower temperature for a little longer. I used half whole wheat flour, and half white flour and the balance seemed about right; all white flour would probably make a lighter cake.

1 quart of buttermilk
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs baking soda
1 cup corn meal
5 cups flour

Beat all ingredients together, until most of the lumps are gone. Preheat a griddle over medium heat. Pour about 1/2 cup of batter onto the griddle and cook on one side for a couple minutes. After flipping the cake, press down slightly with the spatula. Cook until done.

Most Used Recipe: Baked Brown Rice

If you come here only to read classic recipes and can't bear the thought of a new recipe, avert your eyes.

For those of you still with me, I am going to share my most used recipe: oven baked brown rice. Many people have sung the glories of rice cookers to me and I'm sure they are very nice and do their job very well. But I have a galley kitchen in a condo and really don't have the space to have any one-hit wonders kitchen appliances (yes, I know I have an apple peeler-corer-slicer but that belongs to my husband and it's teeny).

I found this recipe in the Cook's Illustrated The Best Light Recipe Cookbook and really can't believe we used to eat the mushy brown rice I used to cook in a pot on the stove. We have brown rice once a week or more so I often double the recipe and reheat it as necessary. In the summer, I don't like heating up the kitchen for this long so I sometimes use the Pampered Chef rice cooker in the microwave but it's got nothing on this recipe. Follow the directions exactly and you will have a pan full of perfectly cooked individual grains of brown rice.

The picture above is of our dinner last night a simple stir fry made with Brussels sprouts, tofu, and red peppers. My friends will tell you I wear a lot of brown, I am boring like that, but a picture of brown rice is even more boring so you get this festive picture that has little to do with the recipe below.

Oven-Baked Brown Rice
Adapted from The Best Light Recipe. This is one recipe I follow exactly (except I use a stone baking pan, not a glass one). Normally, brown rice calls for a 2:1 ratio of water to rice but not here. Trust me...just trust the Cook's Illustrated people.

1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 1/3 cups water
1 Tbs olive oil
salt

Heat the oven to 375. Spread the rice in an 8" square glass dish. Bring the water and oil to a boil in a saucepan. Stir in a little salt. Pour the water over the rice. Cover the baking dish with a double layer of foil. Bake about one hour.

Remove the dish from the oven and uncover (there will be a lot of steam). Fluff the rice with a fork, cover with a clean dish towel and let stand for five minutes. Uncover and let stand for five more minutes before serving.

Smells Like Christmas

The first time I had these cookies was at a holiday party about seven or eight years ago. After biting into one, I found the hostess and started babbling about how great they are, how the spices are just right, and they are soft and chewy, and on an on. Now that I think about it, it's a little embarrassing. I mean, it's a cookie. These cookies are perfect to make and mail to friends and family or just to have sitting around during the holidays, since they require aging of at least one week and do well sitting in a tin for a month or so.

The woman who gave me this recipe is really...neat. I don't know how else to describe her. She is an emergency room nurse, and seems equally at home talking about grody emergency room stuff and the finer points of baking. Her husband is the kind of guy who has a special room to smoke his cigars and drinks hard liquor on the rocks and listens to old jazz records, in a classy, not a stuffy way. When I asked for this recipes she wrote it down for me on a little card which I laminated and dang-it, I'm glad I did since I pull it out every year. You'll do the same, I guarantee.

Lebkuchen
White whole wheat or whole wheat flour can be nicely substituted in this recipe, though I suggest you use about 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup all purpose flour for a lighter cookie. Chop, chop, chop the fruit peels; it's a messy, sticky business but worth it. I use almond meal in place of the chopped almonds. You'll notice this cookie has no oil or butter, so it's actually a very low fat cookie, though I haven't calculated the nutritional value. These cookies pack nicely in tins and can be mailed or just sit around your house for the holiday season. They only get better!

1 egg
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup dark molasses
3 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds
1/2 cup finely chopped mixed fruit peels
Lemon glaze (recipe below)

Beat egg in a small bowl on high speed about one minute. Add brown sugar and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in honey and molasses. Stir together flour, cinnamon, soda, cloves, ginger, and cardamom in a large bowl. Add beaten mixture and stir by hand to combine. Stir in almonds and fruit peels. Cover and chill dough three hours.

Preheat oven to 350. Divide dough in half. Roll on a lightly floured board to make a 12" x 8" rectangle. Cut into 2" squares and bake on greased cookie sheets at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet for one minute. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack and brush with lemon glaze while still warm. Age cookies in a tin for at least one week.

Lemon glaze: Combine 1 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar, 1 Tbs melted butter, and 2T lemon juice. Add enough water to make glaze drizzling consistency.

Slimming Bread

How does one make slimming bread? By following the recipe from the Slenderella cook book of course! What makes this bread different? Hmmm, the ingredients look like just about any whole wheat bread recipe. You mix it and knead it and let it rise. Looks pretty normal to me.

Oh. Here it is at the end of the recipe. "Each loaf makes 27 slices 1/3 inch thick--30 calories each." Bread sliced 1/3 inch thick? Riiiiiight.

Whole-Wheat Bread or Rolls
Adapted from the Slenderalla Cookbook, 1957.

1 package yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 cup skim milk
1 Tbs butter or margarine
2 cups sifted whole wheat flour
1 cup sifted flour

Combine the yeast, sugar, salt, and water. Stir until yeast dissolves. Scald the milk; add the butter and let cool. Add the yeast mixture and the flour. Beat until smooth. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, then turn dough over. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk. Punch down.

You can chill part of the dough up to 1 week. This will make 2 loaves or 24 rolls.

For rolls: Break dough into small pieces and put in muffin pans. Cover and let double in bulk. Bake at 400 about 20 minutes.

For bread: Divide the dough into 2, shape and place in 2 loaf plans. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes. Remove from pans at once and let cool on a cake rack.

A few tips from the Classic Cook...

If you are like me and do not have a stand mixer (yet) I highly recommend you buy a dough whisk. I use this one from King Arthur Flour and I really can't believe I used to mix bread dough with a wooden spoon.

The dough will feel quite sticky when you first start kneading it (see first picture). It may need a little extra flour but try to keep kneading and not add extra flour unless it absolutely needs it. Eventually, the dough will become smooth and elastic (see second picture). I've read that it's really difficult to over knead the bread if you do it by hand so don't be afraid to keep going.

Finally, an easy way to shape rolls is to roll the dough into little balls and put three in each muffin cup.

Christmas in a Bowl

Now normally I'm not one to rush into Christmas and I cringe when I walk into stores and see Christmas stuff now. But, come on, it can't hurt to be reminded of sitting around on cold nights stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree, can it? I remember my parents popping loads of popcorn and leaving it in brown paper bags to go stale so they could string it. My husband and I did this for a couple years and hung it out for the birds after Christmas was over, but, dang, it was a lot of work.

You may not be able to find this recipe in any classic cook book but what's more classic than popcorn? Ok, maybe popcorn with dried cranberries, covered with soymilk and eaten for breakfast isn't something grandma ate but stick with me for a minute. This is good stuff. Alton Brown said you can eat popcorn with milk and that's good enough for me. (I can't find a link to this recommendation but I'm sure I saw on it one of this shows. I wouldn't lie to you.)

Now don't go using microwave popcorn from one of those illness causing bags. Stick to an air popper or a pot on the stove or a brown paper bag or, my favorite, a microwave popcorn bowl. I made it without oil or butter or salt, but I think fat and salt wouldn't hurt this breakfast. Pour a handful into a bowl, top with a few dried cranberries, and pour on soymilk or milk or whatever you like on your cereal. Yum.

The Most Boring Picture Ever, but the Bread is Good

Perhaps I should have found something more colorful for my first post. Some berries, or tomatoes, or, if that's too crazy, maybe something with two shades of brown. Instead, it's this: brown bread, with a hint of sweetness and two types of whole grains.

“Cooking with Wholegrains,” a cookbook by Mildred Ellen Orton published in 1951, contains a brief history of whole grains by Vrest Orton. The Ortons operated a grain mill in Vermont, and Mr. Orton notes that prior to 1850 all cookbooks were whole grain cookbooks. The discussion of enriched flour, large companies, and human preference for food that isn’t good for them, is not out of place in 2007. The recipes encourage creativity and there are helpful notes throughout. I snagged my copy at a used bookstore; I don’t see many available online.

For our camping trip, I made a corn meal and whole wheat quick bread that (I’m hoping!) will hold up well in the August heat. It came together very quickly, especially since I ignored the suggestion to sift the dry ingredients into the wet. I know, I know, this can be an important step but I skip it whenever possible. As I am anxiously awaiting an order of non-aluminum baking powder, I substituted a mix of baking soda, arrowroot, and cream of tartar (found in this excellent cookbook), used melted butter instead of shortening, and used a 9x9 pan.

Early American Hot Bread
adapted from “Cooking with Wholegrains”

1 egg
1 cup milk
2 Tbs honey or maple syrup
2/3 cup corn meal
2 ½ tsp baking powder
3 Tbs melted shortening

Grease 8x8 pan and heat oven to 425F.

Beat egg until light; add milk and sweetener. Mix dry ingredients and sift into egg mixture. Add melted shortening. Mix together and pour into pan. Bake 20 minutes.

(The recipe also includes this note: “This hot bread is grand provender for growing kids to thrive on.”)