The Sassiness of the Seasons

We love GINGER. We love it in lemonade in the summer, in cookies and muffins in the winter, and in tea after dinner.

The other day, I stumbled across a recipe for a lemon-ginger infused simple syrup, complete with (of course) suggestions for mixing it with alcohol.

I went and purchased a knob of fresh ginger (I usually substitute powdered in any recipe that calls for fresh...) and a pound of lemons and Matt and I chopped and zested and simmered away an afternoon.

Here's how:

Three inches fresh ginger, peeled and sliced fine
2 cups water
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup lemon juice
zest of one lemon

Pile the sugar and ginger in a saucepan with the water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat, simmering for five minutes, stirring frequently. Allow the syrup to cool.

Squeeze a cup of lemon juice (about four lemons), first zesting one of them into a small bowl. (It is easier, we found, to zest a LEMON as opposed to two halves of the empty peel...)

Pour off the cooled ginger-slices syrup into the blender and puree. (This will take a couple of minutes, due to the strings in the ginger. And you will STILL get strings in the finished product, but oh WELL!)

Strain the pureed syrup into a glass jar, add the lemon juice with the zest and shake vigorously.

Immediately rim a martini glass with 1/4 powdered ginger, 3/4 sugar (we keep a mix of this in our spice rack, nom nom deee-lishus). Pour 2 oz syrup and 2 oz vodka into an chilled cocktail mixer, add ice and shake. Pour into rimmed glass. Place glass jar of lemon-ginger syrup in the fridge, where it will keep for a week. (Two weeks in the freezer.)

Sit down and enjoy your lemon-ginger martini. The dirty blender, sticky saucepan, lemony zester and messy countertop can wait.


Salut!

Autumn Treats

As promised, one of the recipes from our Young-uns Gathering here at the house:

Pumpkin Spice Bread

Preheat oven to 350, and grease a loaf pan

Sift together, in a larger bowl (since the wet ingredients are being added TO the dry, in this one):
2 c whole wheat pastry* flour
2 tsp baking POWDER
1 tsp baking SODA
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground/powdered ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves.

Combine, in another bowl:

2 c canned pumpkin
1/2 c pure maple syrup
1/4 c apple butter **
1 tbs canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until everything is evenly moist. (The batter will be stiff.) Fold in 1 c golden raisins.

Evenly spoon the batter along the length of the pan, but don't press down or spread it to the edges, as it expands during the baking. (And beLIEVE me, you do not want this to stick!)


Bake 50 minutes to an hour, until a knife comes out clean.

Remove from oven and turn out onto a cooling rack. Slice when cool.

Leftovers, if any, should keep in an airtight container for about a week.



From The Post Punk Kitchen.


* WW all-purpose is also fine, but bread is slightly more dense
** Substituted the same amount of apple sauce, because I had no apple butter.


Next up: Mocha Chip Muffins with Peanut Butter Chocolate Frosting!

Breakfast goodies

This is a placeholder until I can retrieve, from under the piles of flour and cookware, all the recipes I used for this past week's "young people's get-together" we held at our house after church. It was not a big crowd, as the "youngsters" (the under-forties) number about seven, including one six-month old baby girl, but it was still a challenge as it turned out that one of our guests is a long-time vegan!

I love baking vegan recipes, though, since they always turn out light and slightly nutty in flavor; never rich or heavy. I ate three mocha-chip muffins, guilt free, knowing there were no eggs or butter or anything remotely fattening or heart-unhealthy in them at all!

Recipes later. My chicken needs to come out of the oven!

Man proposes, God disposes.

Tomorrow morning I am going to wash a five pound chicken and put it in a bag with 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice (I guess that I will also be squeezing several limes) 1/4 cup oliv oil, 1 tablespoon minced garlic and 1 tablespoon grated onion (or 2 tsp. onion powder...) 2 tablespoons minced cilantro and 1/2 tsp chile powder, and stick it back in the fridge.

Then I'll make a salsa verde, and let it sit in the fridge all day, to absorb.

About 6:30 p.m., I'll heat the oven to 450 and remove the chicken from the marinade, rinsing off the cilantro (so it doesn't burn) and roast the chicken breast, 15-20 minutes per pound.

I'm making bread right now.

When the chicken is done, I'll remove it from the dish to a cutting board and let it sit for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, I'll heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil and saute a clove or two minced garlic until almost toasted. Throw in a handful of string beans and stir until just wilted, then remove to a covered dish on the back of the stove to keep warm.

Then, set out the salsa verde with a serving spoon for pouring over the otherwise bland string beans, slice up some day-old homemade whole wheat bread, and call the men* to dinner.


Let's see how well this pans out.
*Andrew is still here, and we have a church friend coming over tomorrow night.

Getting rid of ALL THOSE TOMATOES

We have a visitor, so while Matt worked this morning, I made several pots of coffee, and egg-tomato-bakes. (We're not sure what they're really called, but I'm trying to come up with a better name...)

Cut off the bottom teeny bit of tomato, so it can stand on end, and then slice off the top (and pop it in your mouth, if you are like me!) and hollow out the seeds and stuff. (I put these aside for later.) Chop up and pop in some garden fresh basil, grind some salt and pepper over them, and then CAREFULLY crack an egg into the basil-pepper-salt hollow of tomato. Place on baking sheet in 450 oven, top with grated cheese (some delish sheep's milk that someone left here on Wednesday night) and pop into the oven. Cook until cheese is throughly melted. Place in a bowl (MESSY!) and cut the tomato away from the egg, letting the yolk run EVERYWHERE. Scoop the mess, bite by bite, onto a slice of freshly made whole wheat bread and chomp away. Use the crusts of the bread to soak up every last bit of basil-tomato-cheese-yolky goodness. Nyam!

(The seeds and stuff I added to this latest batch of stewed tomatoes. All GONE! Until someone else harvests theirs...)

Life hands me lemons pretty much every day.

Had a surplus of lemons and limes, and also a box full of glass bottles to be filled with something (we use them for simple syrup and homemade kahlua), sooooo:

Juice two ripe* lemons, strain out seeds, separate pulp. Add 1 1/2 cups of sugar to 1/2 cup of water, boil down, stirring constantly, for simple syrup**. Add the lemon juice and pulp, if desired. Congratulations! You now have lemonade concentrate that you made yourself!! Chill until ready to use. Add 4 1/2 cups of ice water for ready-to-go, homemade lemonade!!

(I made another batch using four limes and one lemon, + 1 1/2 c. simple syrup, calling it lemon-limeade.)


*My lemons were overripe, so I did not have to do this, but this recipe recommended softening them either by poking holes in them with a fork and sticking them in the microwave, which we do not have, or dunking them in boiling water for thirty seconds and rolling them around the counter top.

**See above re: bottles of simple syrup; I added 1 1/2 cups of our pre-made simple syrup from the fridge.

With a Cherry on Top

With a Cherry on Top
Originally uploaded by gaffentine