Pecan tapenade

From the cookbook Jody gave me - - which gave about 5 hit recipes for Thanksgiving dinner:

Pecan tapenade (the cookbook used walnuts. I didn't have any.)

Roast 2 ¼ cups pecans - - at 300 for 10 minutes, probably, then ten minutes more. Let them cool.

Blend 1 c. olive oil, 1/3 c (5 big) garlic cloves, peeled, 1 Tablespoon mustard (I use the rough-style with some unground mustard seeds in it), ¾ teaspoon black pepper and 1 ½ teaspoons salt in the blender or food processor.

Add the pecans and 2 teaspoons fresh, or ¼ teaspoon dried, rosemary. Process briefly or pulse, leaving the mixture a little chunky, not pasty.

This was great on bruscetta made from baguette (brush with olive oil and pressed garlic and bake maybe 10 min at 300) or from whole wheat/kalamata olive/onion bread (same prep).

Whining

I just dropped a pie. I ate some of what fell on the floor and it was delicious. You take 6 honeycrisp or fuji apples, slice them very fine, and cook them delicately in lots of almond oil, until they have that crisp texture promising a bit of crunch yielding to sweetness. Then mix and add 3 T sugar, juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 1/2 T flour, 1 T port, 1/2 t vanilla extractg, 1/2 t Fimo balsamic vinegar, 1/4 t black pepper, 1/4 t salt, 1/4 t freshly ground cinnamon, and pinches each of freshly ground nutmeg and cloves. Cook it in a pie shell, first at 450 for 10 minutes, then at 350 for 30. Meanwhile make the blackberry glaze: gently cook 1 c. blackberries with 1 1/2 T sugar, and then press through a sieve. Then drop pie on floor.

What have I been up to lately?

Or more importantly, what have I been cooking (and why haven't I been writing about it)?

Well, there is no exciting answer to these questions. I have been cooking many things, but I've pretty much gotten them all directly off 101 cookbooks, so it doesn't seem worth replicating them here on this blog. And I've been a bit busier than usual with school. 

The one interesting bit of news for my cooking is that I have decided to only cook one meat centered meal a week. It has worked out well this month. We've been eating a lot of beans and tofu and grains and soups, and last night I made tempeh for the first time! I thought it was delicious. I made it with a spicy, salty, sweet glaze. Even Oliver, a self-professed tempeh hater, said he liked it. 

Thanksgiving is looming large, and I think I will be making a persimmon pudding, apple crisp, and cornbread to take to the Zill family dinner. I bought ripe persimmons today, and I might make the pudding ahead of time (tomorrow). Happily, our persimmon pudding recipe has been immortalized on cafe Libby! We're famous!

http://cafelibby.blogspot.com

As you can see, Libby wrote a totally quality post about how to make the pudding. I was really surprised mine turned out so well last year, and hopefully it will again. At the farmers market, when I went to see the persimmon farmer, I told him I was making a pudding and he new was like "you need two cups of pulp, huh?". So I guess a lot of people had been visiting him with the same thing in mind! 

Can't wait to hear about Thanksgiving back there in Virginia!

Delicious Apple Pie

Today I went to a Thanksgiving potluck in Reed Hall. I was very impressed--everybody brought something, and the person who organized it brought about 5 things. We had a wide array of traditional Thanksgiving foods, plus a few delicious others. In a very Westbrook-like turn of events, nobody thought to bring cranberry sauce. I brought the apple pie. I tried a variation on a Paula Deen recipe that I got when I gave blood last week and it turned out wonderfully:

Preheat oven to 350.
Fill pre-made pie crust with:
-5 peeled, chopt apples
-1 16 oz jar applesauce (Gravenstein, preferably)
-1T flour
-1t cinnamon
-1/2t cloves
-dash salt
-juice of 1/2 lemon
Dot top with 2T butter, chopt.
For the top, I made a half recipe of this pie crust:
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001127perfect_pie_crust.php
using 1/2 white whole wheat flour.
Sprinkle top liberally with brown and white sugar and bake for 45 minutes.
I served it with Hagen Daz Dolce de Leche ice cream (good choice).

Enjoy!

Pomegranate glaze

This recipe is from the cookbook Jody gave me. Start with 1/2 cup red wine, a bay leaf, 1 chopt spring onion and 6 peppercorns and simmer that. It should reduce by 1/2. Meanwhile (and it takes a long while), take about 1/2 of the seeds from a pomegranate, mix them with 1/4 c water in a mug, and smush them. When the wine has reduced, force the smushings through a sieve. (Today I bought some Pom pomegranate juice to finesse this step in the future.) Add 1 Tablespoon roasted almond oil (the recipe calls for melted butter), 1 t. maple syrup and 1/8 t. salt. Mix 1 t. arrowroot into 1/4 c. cold water. Add that to the mixture and stir for a few minutes until the mixture clears. Hope that the mixture thickens. It might not, because mine didn't. But next time I'll try cornstarch, or more arrowroot. It really tasted nice on salmon.

eat your spinach!!

When I'm feeling low on energy, spinach always perks me up. Maybe it's the iron, maybe it's some placebo-trickery. This recipe includes raisins, which give it even more iron content and some delicious sweet flavor:

Heat 1T olive oil on medium heat
Sautee one small onion, chopt
Add handful raisins after the onions cook a few minutes
cook a few more minutes
add baby spinach leaves
wilt
season with nutmeg, cinnamon

Inspired by tapas.