MITCH IN THE KITCHEN

apple-pear butter

Turns out apple butter is pretty easy to make. It just takes some patience to wait for everything to reduce. I threw in a few Bosc pears because they were here and on the verge of rotting into a brown mess. Spread this stuff on toast, biscuits, whole wheat muffins (like I did), pancakes, nut butter sandwiches, meaty sandwiches, melted cheese sandwiches, bagels with cream cheese, vanilla ice cream… you get what I’m getting at.

about 4 pounds (10-12 medium or so) apples and/or pears
1 cup apple cider
small cinnamon stick (optional) or some other blend of warm spices
1/3 cup sugar
a few squeezes of lemon juice

Peel the apples and/or pears and cut them up into chunks. Combine with apple cider and cinnamon stick in a pot (it should be filled about halfway up). Bring to a boil then lower to a simmer and cook until the fruit gets soft, about 30 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick. Pureeing is optional; you can make your fruit butter as smooth or chunky as you’d like. Add sugar and lemon juice to the pureed fruit. Cook mixture over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it has reduced and thickened. This may take a few hours. Be careful towards the end, because you don’t want scorched apple butter stuck to the bottom of your pot. You can do some real canning after this, or you can just store it in a jar in the fridge.

butternut squash and apple soup with fried sage leaves

More soup for me! And you, if you’re up for it. This is a smooth and soothing soup I made with butternut squash and apples, two things I’ll be lugging home from the farmers’ market every week. It’s a little sweet and a little tart (depending on how sour you like your apples), and the sage leaves add that woodsy “ahhh… fall” finish.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 small leek (white and light green parts) chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
about 3 cups of cubed butternut squash
2 medium apples, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
about 2 cups vegetable broth
milk, cream, or creme fraiche if you wanna get fancy
salt and pepper
fried sage leaves

Add butter and oil to a medium-sized pot over medium-low heat. Add onion, leek, celery, and garlic. Sprinkle on some salt. Cook until onions are translucent and soft, about 10 minutes. Add butternut squash and apples, and cook for another 10 minutes or so. Add just enough broth to cover the vegetables, and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes. The squash and apples should get really soft. Let it cool for a little bit, then puree with a blender (carefully! it’s hot!). Pour it all back in the pot and add more broth if you want a thinner soup. Season with salt and pepper (white pepper if you don’t feel like seeing little black flecks) to taste. Heat everything back up, then stir in as little or as much of your dairy product of choice.

Serve topped with fried sage leaves. To make them: heat a thin layer of oil in a small pan over medium heat, then fry fresh sage leaves until they turn dark green and get nice and crispy. Drain on a paper towel and season with a little salt. Use the leftover sage oil for dressing or bread-dipping or something.

apple gouda oatmeal cookies

One glimpse at this recipe and I knew I had to try it. Are these cookies supposed to be eaten for dessert? Breakfast? Late-night snack?

Who cares, they’re delicious. I want to start carrying them around in my pockets so I can eat them whenever I want.

A few notes: I didn’t peel the apples and I finely chopped them instead of grating them. I ran out of golden raisins so I added dried cranberries. Chill the dough before baking to get chewy, tall cookies. Best when fresh and gooey and crisp on the outside, in my opinion.

spiced apple-pear sauce cake with cream cheese frosting

This one’s for Nancy :)

A few weeks ago, I found myself with way, way, way too many Bosc pears. Several of them were starting to get brown and mushy and spoiled in spots. I ended up turning maybe 10 of them into a pear puree (like applesauce but with pears), carefully peeling them and cutting around the gross brown spots. I added a couple of tart (cameo, I think) apples to the sauce, because the pears’ flavor was a little too subtle, and I felt like the sauce needed a little more… pop to it. I had enough apple-pear sauce to make two of these cakes, one for a previously mentioned pre-Thanksgiving potluck with friends, and another for a post-Thanksgiving potluck at Mike’s place (yes, there was overlap in friends who attended… best 2 weeks of Thanksgiving ever). This cake is fantastically moist and simple to make, as far as cakes go. Next time, I may have to make one all for myself.

Adapted from Gourmet (I mostly cut down on the sugar a little bit, because I like my sweets not-too-sweet)

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or use only 2 cups all purpose flour, total)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce, pear sauce, or apple-pear sauce
1 small crisp apple or pear, peeled and grated using a large-holed grater (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch square cake pan (I like to line the bottom with parchment paper and then butter it).

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.

Beat butter with brown sugar and vanilla at high speed using an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well. Add applesauce. Add flour mixture at low speed, just until combined. Fold in grated apple.

Spread batter evenly in pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool completely before frosting.

For frosting:

5 oz cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup confectioners (powdered) sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together at high speed using an electric mixer, until fluffy. Sift powdered sugar and cinnamon into the mixing bowl, then beat at medium speed until combined. Spread over cooled cake.

radicchio, apple, and gorgonzola pizza

Radicchio is bitter. SO bitter. And John and I do ok with bitter (black coffee, the hoppiest IPAs imaginable, bitter melon when it’s drowned in some kind of spicy garlicky sauce).  But this Treviso radicchio from our CSA was too much. I tried marinating and broiling it with vinegar and garlic, which smelled fantastic but was un-swallowable.

I consulted Chowhound (one of the best resources out there for my cooking woes) and found out that soaking the leaves in ice water for at least 30 minutes subdues much of the bitterness. Someone also suggested “throwing other strong flavors at it: blue cheese, apples, walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette.” A lovely idea for a pizza. Next time, I’m thinkin’ smoked mozzarella or olives. But I’ll probably just make this pizza again.

Order of layers: pizza dough, mozzarella, thinly sliced apples, ribbons of radicchio (I used a very conservative amount, but next time there will be more), gorgonzola cheese. Bake at 500 degrees for around 20 minutes, or until it looks done (because we all know what pizza is supposed to look like). Top with toasted walnuts (or just add un-toasted walnuts during the last couple minutes of baking).

cabbage and apple slaw with miso dressing

Every Monday, I am a volunteer cook and lunch lady at a public school in my neighborhood as part of the Cook for Kids program organized by Wellness in the Schools (the website’s content is way thin, I know). The resident chef (a legit culinary school graduate) and I put together a salad bar for the school cafeteria using basic fruits and vegetables and a lot of improvisation. One of the standards is something we call “healthy slaw”: no mayo, just raw shredded cabbage and other veggies in a light honey-kissed vinaigrette. I happen to do my own version of this, with the addition of miso and sesame oil. Sometimes it gets packed up for lunch with quinoa or some other whole grain, chicken or tofu or beans, roasted veggies, and other stuff you would expect a nutrition nerd to eat. John and I catch colleagues/classmates checking out our lunch, but we will never (ever!) trade.

2 teaspoons shiro miso (white miso)
warm water
1 to 2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon white wine or rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 scallion stalk, chopped
1 small head of cabbage, shredded
1 medium apple, julienne into thin strips
sesame seeds

Dissolve miso in a bit of warm water (just enough to thin/smooth it out). Mix in honey, vinegar, and sesame oil. Toss with scallion, cabbage, apple, and sesame seeds.

quinoa with apples and walnuts

Apples apples apples, all through fall and winter. That’s all the fruit I’m getting. Honey-sweet gold supreme apples, loudly crisp Macoun apples, and my personal favorite: the winesap. New York Magazine has a feature on locally grown apple varieties found at the greenmarket (John and I are huge fans of visual aids like this… I think I squealed a little when I saw it). Though the descriptions probably won’t help you figure out which among these varieties you like, eating them will. And I’ve seen prices drop to something like $1 a pound in mid-winter.

My new thing this season is grain salads with apples and warm spices. Make a vinaigrette with shallots or red onion, whatever vinegar you’d like (I used apple cider vinegar), and oil. Spike it with a little bit of cinnamon (or garam masala even). Add cooked quinoa, chopped apples, dried cherries (or cranberries or raisins), toasted walnuts and/or pecans, and chopped parsley. Also good with a little yogurt in the dressing, and/or with wheatberries instead of quinoa.

winter squash pizza with caramelized onion, fennel, apple

This pizza is a collage of fall flavors from the farmers’ market. I was feeling ambitious today, so I ended up spending way more time than usual on dinner for just myself. Anytime I’m hungry (or just getting off the subway), it’s always tempting to saunter into Little Luzzo’s and grab a decently delicious slice. Tonight I decided to knead and puree my way to homemade pizza that was eaten at 10pm. Was it worth it? Always. And I have leftovers too.

I made my pizza crust with a blend of whole wheat and regular flour, and pureed carnival squash (similar to acorn squash) stood in for the usual tomato sauce. I also used small squares of sliced cheese instead of piles of shredded cheese. As much as I love cheese (and I do love cheese), I can’t go around creating fatty calorie-bomb pizzas for a regular night’s dinner if I’m going to study and work in nutrition. Right?

1 small yellow onion
1 small fennel bulb
1/2 medium apple
4 small sage leaves, chopped
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme
olive oil
5 to 7 oz mozzarella or fontina cheese, sliced

1 1/2 cups of winter squash puree with roasted garlic (details below)
pizza dough (details below squash puree details)

fried sage leaves for garnish
grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Heat a large pan over medium-low heat with a bit of olive oil. Cut onion and fennel in half lengthwise, then very thinly crosswise. Peel apple and cut into thin matchsticks. Add onion, fennel, and apple to the pan, along with chopped sage, thyme, some salt, and pepper. Let mixture cook until soft and lightly browned, tossing frequently. It should take 20 to 25 minutes or so. If stuff starts sticking to the pan, add a tiny splash of water.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a half sheet pan (about 18 by 13 inches) with parchment paper. Or you could use a pizza stone.

Sprinkle some corn meal on the baking sheet. Place the dough on the baking sheet and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Shape dough to fit pan. If it won’t stretch, let it rest a bit before handling it.

Spread squash puree over dough. Spread onion fennel apple mixture over squash. Top with cheese slices. Bake in oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until cheese is slightly bubbly and crust is slightly golden. Top with fried sage leaves (directions: just throw some sage leaves into hot oil and fry until they become translucent, then sprinkle a little salt on them) and grated cheese.

Winter Squash Puree
(adapted from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Cooking)

Cut the squash(es) in half (whether this is lengthwise or crosswise doesn’t matter) and scoop out the seeds. Place the halves on a parchment-lined or lightly oiled baking sheet or baking pan. Throw in a few unpeeled garlic cloves (optional). Bake in a 350-degree oven until the flesh of the squash is soft. The only way to know is to keep checking, since the time will vary depending on what type of squash you have and what size it is. Let it cool, then scoop the flesh out. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the papery stuff. Mash squash and garlic with a fork, potato masher, or food mill. Add a small spoonful of cream to smooth things out. Season with salt and pepper. I added some fresh thyme as well.

This stuff is also great in soup (add to broth with herbs and a little more cream or milk), as a sauce for pasta (add some herbs and cream or milk), or as baby food (because I’m pretty sure infants love roasted garlic).

Basic Pizza Dough
(adapted from The Cheese Board Collective Works)
makes two 12-inch, thin pizzas, or a large rectangular 18 by 13-inch pizza

1 packet (2 1/4 tsp or 1/4 oz) yeast
1 1/8 cup warm water
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/8 tsp salt
2 3/4 to 3 1/4 cups flour (I use 3/4 cups whole wheat flour and regular unbleached flour for the rest)

Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large mixing bowl. Whisk with a fork, let stand 5 minutes.

Add oil, salt, and 2 1/2 cups of flour. Mix with a wooden spoon for at least 5 minutes. The dough should be a little sticky, but not so much that you can’t pick it up with your hands. It should form a ball.

Add 1/4 cup of flour to a large cutting board (or any clean, flat surface such as a large baking sheet). Dust your hands with some flour. Knead dough for at least 8 minutes, incorporating flour. If the dough is still way too sticky, add flour 1/4 cup at a time. The end result should be a smooth ball of dough that isn’t too dry. For those of you who don’t know how to knead, all you do is fold the dough towards you, then push forward with the heel of your hand, then rotate a quarter turn and repeat. It can be therapeutic, like those stress-relief balls that you squeeze. Tip: to prevent your kneading surface from slipping, place a damp towel under it.

Place dough in a well-oiled, large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free place (such as your kitchen stove) for 1 hour (or whatever the yeast packet instructions say).

After the dough has doubled in size, divide it into two portions (if making two pizzas) and use one per pizza.