Frog Guts Pudding, Just Kidding...

Growing up we didn't eat dessert often in my home and as a consequence dessert cooking; pastries, chocolate, etc... was not part of my cooking education. I'm not complaining about this, while I lack many of the kitchen skills to deal with sweet ingredients I also lack much of the weakness to eat sweet foods. Don't get me wrong I'm hardly impervious to sweets but there are lots of them I don't want. For instance: I'll eat most cakes if you put a piece in my hand but I'd rather have fresh fruit and forget the icing, typical icing like you get out of the can on the supermarket shelf I won't touch. Also, I like apple pie but I will actively refuse cherry, banana cream, pumpkin and a whole host of other pies. I'll eat most homemade ice creams but very few store bought. In short I'm a picky dessert eater, I'll eat my greens, no problem, but I don't do a good job cleaning my plate when it comes to desserts.

It was therefore a bit of a surprise to me to find myself playing around with dessert recipes. Mom asked me to make chocolate pudding from a recipe she had in a magazine. Discovering how easy pudding is to make; cornstarch, flavor, sugar and milk, I decided to branch out and experiment with other types of pudding. Given my lack of interest in typical desserts, what isn't so surprising is that I quickly ventured into the unusual.

This is one such recipe. Before you get too concerned it has been taste tested by people with more conventional dessert taste.

Avocado Lime Pudding

This recipe makes 4 servings:

• 1/3 cup masa flour (corn flour)
• 1/3 cup butter (Smart Balance in my case) or oil of your choice (olive or canola)
• 1 avocado mashed
• zest of 2 limes
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 1/2 cup of sugar (I use 1/4 cup brown and 1/4 cup of splenda)
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon coconut extract
• 2 cups of no-fat milk

To mash the avocado, I put the avocado diced into a plastic bag and add the lime zest and juice then mash the bag until the avocado is pulp. This allows me to completely mash the avocado without any lumps and mixing the lime in keeps the avocado from browning and I don't have to worry about the lime juice curdling the milk.

In a medium sauce pan cook the butter/oil and masa flour as you would a white roux. I wanted this recipe to have a South American flare so I choose to make my pudding thickener with masa flour instead of all purpose flour or cornstarch. If you have never used masa flour to make a roux I recommend it, it doesn't have quite the thickening power that wheat flour does but it is close and the masa flour adds a nice nutty, sweet taste to whatever your thickening. The flavor in pudding is reminiscent of Indian pudding. If you don't have access to masa flour then leave out the butter/oil, and flour. Instead add 4 tablespoons of cornstarch to the cold ingredients.

Once the masa flour and butter/oil have developed into a roux add the rest of the ingredients and stir constantly until mixture comes to a boil and thickens. If the avocado is in a big lump at first don't worry as the mixture heats the avocado will break apart and mix evenly with the milk.

Remove from heat, pour into serving dishes and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

A note about this recipe:

We work very hard in this household to limit the amount of fat we eat, so when I started making puddings I used the milk we had on hand which was non-fat. I quickly discovered that pudding needs a little fat. That is how I came to use avocado, avocado has "good fat" and a mild flavor which is masked by most other ingredients. If you are concerned about fat in your diet there are quite a few applications where avocado can be a substitute for cream including most puddings. If for instance you would like to make chocolate pudding combine cocoa powder with the avocado before mashing then add it to the milk, sugar, and cornstarch. Avocado can also be substituted in soups that call for cream. It cannot be a substitute in applications where the "fat" needs to be cooked such as in biscuits or sautes. Mashed avocado is not going to taste just like cream but it is very close, give it a try you might like it.

Chocolate Biscuits

Recently two nice things converged that made this recipe possible, one strawberries were on sell and two we were having company. We have a "fresh produce" stand in my town, I'm very suspicious of it, often the produce it sells is out of season and it carries items that I'm sure aren't grown locally. Sometimes though it does have what I consider fresh local produce, recently it had a big sign hanging across the front, "Plant City Strawberries." Plant City, Florida is a small town in central Florida, which has slowly become a bedroom community of Tampa, however long before Florida saw it's current population boom, Plant City was know for its early strawberry harvest. I have rarely been to Plant City myself and my personal knowledge of it is as a stop between Tampa and Orlando, but my childhood is rich with stories of the Plant City my Grandmother grew up in. As a child I considered my Grandmother an insufferable story teller, time and age has softened my view of this remarkable woman who would tell you in one breath that she was raised as an only child and tell you in the nest breath about her brother Bill. In the stories of my Grandmother's Plant City it was suffering through the transition from a community where cotton was king to the town known for its strawberries. Given my association with Plant City strawberries and my childhood it probably is no surprise that the sign for, "Plant City Strawberries," drew me. I didn't have any reason to buy strawberries but I was sure I could d something with them.

Not long after the sign appeared over the produce stand, Dad asked me to make lunch for some friends that were coming to town on business. Readily I agreed and immediately went out and bought strawberries to make into a desert. The day of the luncheon came and I still hadn't decided on what I would with the strawberries. I landed on serving the strawberries over shortcakes. I felt this was an imperfect solution for desert, because the wife of Dad's friend loves all things chocolate. As I was looking up shortcake recipes I thought to myself, "chocolate shortcakes," and this recipe was born.

This recipe makes 6 biscuits.

• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of cocoa
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 6 tablespoons of butter or shortening
• approximately 3/4 cup of milk
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Shift all the dry ingredients together so that the cocoa is mixed throughout the flour. Add the butter and use your hands to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients. Slowly add the milk until you have a firm dough. I use my hands to tear the biscuits off but feel free to roll the dough out and cut it.

Bake for 20 min at 350 degrees.

Olive Tapenade

When I first moved to Atlanta I invested in a library card. I lived at the top of Mount Pace, at the bottom was Vinings with a Cobb County library, I would get up on Saturday, enjoy a cup of coffee on my patio then hike down to town and hit the library, pick up a few books then hit the smoothy shop before hiking back up the mountain. I would almost always pick up a cookbook on these weekend excursions which is how I discovered olive tapenade. I checked out a cookbook dedicated to French vegetarian cooking, this lady's idea was that as a vegetarian it wasn't necessary to give up the European flavors that we are used to. I found it to be an excellent cookbook and although I usually substituted her tofu and bean paste with chicken and fish I could see her point.

One of her recipes was tofu cooked in crushed tomatoes and topped with tapenade. Being a Chipleyite, all be it a worldly one, I had never heard of tap-e-nade but I'm an adventuresome soul so I very dutifully followed the recipe to create this odd stuff to top my chicken cooked in crushed tomatoes. With great recipes as with great adventures there are many places to turn back or turn aside and in this strange concoction I was being lead to make, this tap-e-nade I found many such a trial. There were capers, a thing I had been introduced to in South Florida, which I had determined that I could tolerate but only in small amounts. There were anchovies, I had my first anchovy on the Mall in Washington DC, they were on a salad I was having for lunch. I was hungry and feeling mentally fortified with my mornings adventures in several of the Capital's museums, I felt it was time to put aside my knee jerk reaction to the word anchovy and I felt I owed the chef that prepared my meal the benefit of the doubt so I bravely forked an anchovy with the greens of my salad. The anchovy was furry, slimy, salty, and indescribably IKE, needless to say I only had the one and had steered clear of them ever since. Last but not lest there were lots of expensive, good olives being combined with these other things which would surely be better whole and left alone. Tapenade, however, turned out to be a culinary adventure worth having.

Having discovered olive tapenade, I found that in Atlanta I could buy commercially prepared tapenade which I happily added to my diet. Moving back to Chipley I despaired of finding any on the shelves of my Piggly Wiggly or even the "Big Box" store by the interstate. I was surprised, therefore, to discover tapenade in the pickle/olive section of the later. It caught my eye which scanned back over to it and my first reaction was, "What's wrong with it?" I picked up the jar to have a closer look and found that this stuff was a "zucchini/olive" tapenade, I tell you this to warn you. This is not Olive Tapenade it is a mere sad shadow of the real thing.

Below is my recipe for olive tapenade I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

• 2 anchovy fillets
• 12 oz olives drained (I use green and Kalamata)
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a blender and process until you have a paste. Store in the refrigerator until needed.

If you would like a quick easy recipe to use tapenade with tonight try New Potatoes and Green Beans dressed with tapenade. Snap the green beans into bit size pieces, cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch cubes and steam them together until the potatoes are fork tender about 10 minutes. Dress them with olive tapenade and balsamic vinegar.

Home Made Pop Tarts

To start with I want to digress completely from the topic of food. Shortly after the New Year I came down with a cold, the fourteen day verity not the seven, this effectively stopped my blogging. I didn't stop cooking but nothing I cooked tasted right. I was well for a week or so but on Tuesday I started sneezing, on Wednesday my nose clogged up and my joints started aching and today I have a sinus infection and a upper respiratory infection. This latest infection has once again affected my ability to taste anything which makes food blogging difficult but it has also affected my energy level, typing this is wearing me out.

Now on to the food.

I've been watching cooking shows with a lot of baking and pastry making with a longing to try my hand at the recipes, but I haven't, knowing that most of these recipes have the fat and sugar content that we try to scrupulously avoid in this house. However, the other day Mom came home and announced, she had virtuously resisted buying wheat bran, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisin pop tarts. I thought to myself I can do that.

Some of you may have memories of home made pocket pies with preserves or beef stew in them. I don't; I'm a child of fast industrial foods and my childhood memory is of Kellogg's Pop-Tarts. Pop-Tarts were a treat for the occasional Saturday or a snack on camping trips. They weren't really a breakfast food in my home because of their high sugar content and low nutritional value but every once in a while Mom would bring them home as a treat. So when I set out to create home made pop-tarts I wanted to recreate the foil rapped treat from a box that I remembered. I just wanted something healthier and a little more grown up.

My favorite Pop-Tart is strawberry, but Mom loves cinnamon and brown sugar so that is what I made. I started my pop tarts using Alton Brown's dough recipe for Pocket Pies. What I got was a big guppy mess. I did do some things differently but not enough to justify the gooey mess I got from the recipe. To fix my mess I had to add a lot of flour. Below is the dough recipe that I came up with after a good bit of playing around with Alton's. Sorry Alton, I think you need at least 3 cups of flour not 2.

Alton's dough recipe calls for 6 tablespoons of shortening. I used 4 tablespoons of Smart Balance butter substitute and 2 tablespoons of shortening. Shortening would probably give the pop tart a flakier crust but Pop-Tart's don't have a flaky crust so the Smart Balance worked for me. You do need to use a fat or fat substitute that is solid at room temperature. Without going into all the reasons why if you don't your end product will be hard as a rock.

I also use different types of flour for my recipe. Because of this I don't have to worry about gluten formation. I can buy gram flour in my local big box store, I didn't use any for this recipe, because I didn't have any in the house but you could substitute some for some of the oat flour. I also used oat flour if you want to use oat meal instead I would grind it in a coffee grinder or a food processor first and I don't know what the substitute ratio is. If you're going to stick to all purpose flour, substitute it on a 1 to 1 basis but be sure to be careful not to over knead the dough as you get to the last of the pop-tarts. Do not use bread flour in this.

This recipe makes about a dozen pop-tarts.

The dough:

• 1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of wheat bran cereal
• 1/2 cup flax seed mill
• 1 3/4 cups of oat flour (notice all of this adds up to more than 2 cups)
• 4 tablespoons of butter substitute (Smart Balance with flax seed oil in my case)
• 2 tablespoons of shortening
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt (I'm in the habit of reducing the salt content in the breads/pastries I make so if you are as well I suggest that you not for this recipe as I've already done it.)
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• Zest of an orange
• Juice of an orange
• 3/4 cup of milk

I used the food processor to cut the Smart Balance and shortening into the dry ingredients including the orange zest. Once the "fat" and dry ingredients are cut together to form the consistency of bread crumbs I put the mixture into a bowl and added the orange juice then I started mixing in the milk until the dough was a stiff ball. I rapped the dough ball in plastic rap and put it the frig.

What I don't like about brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tart's is that they aren't chewy, the filling is hard. They aren't crunchy, but the filling has no moisture to it so the Pop-Tart's seriously need a glass of milk to go with them. I wanted my home made pop-tart's to have a chewy filling, so I substituted some of the brown sugar with molasses and I add prune puree. You can't taste the prunes in the filling they add a sweetness and a gooeyness to the pop-tarts that I like. You can get prune puree in the baby food section of the grocery store, because I also use it in my bran muffins I look for it on sale and stock up. It can be expensive. I think that pureed dates would be a good substitute; the problem would be that you would have to puree them yourself. I've considered this with the prunes as the baby food is on the pricey side; then I've imagined the sticky mess it would make in the blender and discarded the idea altogether.

The filling:

• 5 oz prune puree
• 5 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1 cup raisins
• 4 tablespoons molasses
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup Altern or Splenda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons of butter or margarine

I put all the ingredients in a microwave safe bowl and microwave on high until the margarine is melted and I can combine all the ingredients.

I set the filling aside and get the dough from the frig. I roll the dough out to about an eighth of an inch. I'm looking for something that I can stick in the toaster without worrying about it and of course my ideal is a Pop-Tart so I wanted a relatively thick crust.

Keeping my Pop-Tart's in mind I rummaged around the house for the perfect cutter to cut my dough with. I found a square tin that we keep odds and ends in that was about the right size. My second choice was a coffee tin so if you have nothing else that will do try that. I cut my dough out, rolled it a little flatter and using a fork I docked it. I turned the docked side down and filled the dough with about a tablespoon and a half of filling. I wet half of the dough with water and then folded the dough in half over the filling. I then crimped the folded ends with the fork tines.

Once all the pastries were made I put them on greased cookie sheets and baked them in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Roasted Tomato Soup and the Trouble You can get into with Woot

The other day I was watching Tyler Florance on Tyler's Ultimate and he was making Roasted Tomato Soup with cherry tomatoes. I immediately began to yearn for spring and a time when I would have fresh cherry tomatoes to roast for soup. Later that week I was in the Piggly Wiggly, my source of fresh local produce, and low and behold there sat Roma tomatoes from the nearby town of Slocomb, Alabama (pronounced Slow-come). I pounced and snatched up several dozen. All the way home I chortled to myself, "Roasted Tomato Soup, Roasted Tomato Soup..."

Many, many moons ago one of my culinaraly wise Aunt's told me the way to make a little sugar in a recipe taste like more is to combine more than one type of sugar - for instance instead of a cup of granulated sugar use 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and 1/4 cup of light brown sugar. My Aunt told me that this principle worked with other ingredients as well; peppercorns, bell peppers and cheeses were a few of the examples she gave me. What makes this recipe so good is that it's an exercise in using this principle of combining ingredients with similar flavor profiles not a recipe of exact ingredients.

I cut the tops off of my Roma tomatoes and put them on a baking sheet. I used about a dozen tomatoes per baking sheet, enough to fit comfortably on the baking sheet without overcrowding it. To that I added a quartered yellow onion. I covered them with olive oil and then added dried herbs. I used oregano, basil and ground sage but there is no rule for this, use what you like in your tomato soup. I put the tomatoes and onion in a 400 degree oven for half an hour to roast. As they were roasting I pealed a head of garlic and a shallot. I added these to the roasting pan about half way through the roasting process.

After about half an hour I took the tomatoes out of the oven and let them cool. While the tomatoes are cooling let me tell you about my Woot trouble. For those of you who don't know, Woot is a website where they offer a one day deal. There are four Woots; Woot, Sellout Woot, Shirt Woot and Wine Woot. I make a regular habit of checking them all and have found some good deals on them. The digital camera taking the pictures that appear on this blog is a Woot purchase. One day I was checking the Woot deals and Wine Woot had a cheese pack. I resisted at first but in the end it was to much for me, I love cheese. The cheese was from Point Reyes Farmstead, CA, they actually shipped the cheese to me, in Florida, from California, I was impressed. The cheeses were a Gouda, a Feta and a Blue. The problem; I don't like Blue Cheese. What to do, what to do; it turns out there are lots of things to do with blue cheese even if you don't like it. My favorite so far is to use it in bread. My favorite bread book, The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger, has a recipe for Roquefort cheese and walnut bread, I had never heard of Roquefort cheese but I had a suspicion that it was a blue so I looked it up. According to the Web, Roquefort is a blue cheese from Roquefort, France the Web claims that Roquefort cheese was a favorite of Charlemagne. Given that, it's a wonder it can't be found in the dairy section of my local Piggly Wiggle. NOT. I substituted the Point Reyes Blue and found that it makes a lovely moist chewy bread. I also use it in my tomato soup as a cream substitute. The Point Reyes Blue is a very creamy, earthy cheese without the sharp tang associated with Cheddar or Cream cheese. If you aren't familiar with a blue that fits this profile stick to cream or if you like a little extra sharpness to your tomato soup use cream cheese.

Once the tomatoes and onions were cool I put everything in the pan into the blender including the oil, the roasted herbs and the little charred bits. To this I added about 2 ounces of blue cheese, two anchovy fillets, a teaspoon of dried oregano and basil, one can of diced tomatoes, one quarter of an onion, two teaspoons of fresh oregano and basil and a leaf of fresh sage. Combining the fresh or raw ingredients with the roasted ingredients gives the tomato soup more depth of flavor. I then blended all this together until it was a smooth puree.

I put the tomato puree into a sauce pot and added a little milk. I like my tomato soup thick, if you like yours thinner add more milk or water until the soup is the consistency you prefer. I brought the tomato soup up to a serving temperature and plated. I ate my soup with an open face sandwich of melted mozzarella cheese, avocado and crab meat on blue cheese bread.

For those of you who like an ingredients list; this makes about 6 cups.

• 1 dozen roasted Roma tomatoes
• 1 roasted head of garlic
• 1 roasted shallot
• 1 onion quartered and roasted
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano roasted
• 1 teaspoon dried basil roasted
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (to roast ingredients above with)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1/4 of a yellow onion
• 2 anchovy fillets
• 2 oz creamy blue cheese
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 teaspoons fresh oregano
• 2 teaspoons fresh basil
• 1 sage leaf

Combine ingredients above olive oil on a baking sheet, roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 min. Once roasted ingredients have cooled combine with the rest of the ingredient list in a blender. Blend until smooth then transfer to a sauce pot and heat on the stove until it reaches serving temperature.

Dark Chicken Stock

I do a lot of cooking in stocks; I do this for two reasons both Dad and I are sodium sensitive and Dad is mostly a vegetarian. I say mostly because he has given up meat except around the holidays and he eats some fish. As long as I don't rub his nose in the fact I'm cooking with stock he doesn't comment on it. If you're trying to go light on salt stock brings a lot of flavor to the party.

I make three types of stock: turkey stock, and two chicken stocks. Alton Brown's recipe is fine for my standard chicken stock. I do have some modifications but they are mostly due to the number of people I cook for and my location. We eat a lot of broiler chickens, which are around 3 lbs, when I'm making stock I use a 5 quart soup pot that I put the chicken in, along with the vegetables, amount reduced appropriately. Then I cook the chicken until it's falling off the bone. I remove the chicken from the pot, pull all the meat off and return the bones to the pot to finish making the stock. I use the pulled chicken for things like chicken salad sandwiches. The other thing I do differently is I cook my stock with the lid on. I can do this and still have the stock form a gelatin because of the smaller pot size.

This requires watching the pot a little more attentively to make sure it never boils over. I go through this extra hassle because of heat and humidity. I live in Florida and right now, in December, when much of the North East is experience a "White Out," I'm sitting here in shorts. I know you are all rushing to get out your smallest fiddle. Not to worry, I'm not expecting sympathy I like the heat, if I didn't I know which direction to go to find the state line, but when you live in this much heat and humidity you should take the climate conditions into consideration when cooking. Cooking in an open pot takes longer over higher heat and the evaporation that occurs as a part of the cooking process adds moisture to the air. Trust me I don't need any extra moisture in the air in my house, it's sticky enough around here as it is.

The third type of stock I make, the second chicken stock, is a dark chicken stock. I collect all the gizzards, hearts and livers from the broiler chickens I use and put them in the freezer when I have the parts from four birds I make this stock.

This makes 4 quarts of stock.

• Gizzards, hearts and livers from 4 chickens
• Bones from 1 chicken
• 1 Smoked turkey wing (I know that turkey isn't chicken, but I like the smoky flavor)
• 1 Hot pepper halved (heat and flavor to your taste)
• 1 Ginger root cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 Onion quartered
• 1 Green bell pepper quartered
• 1 Head of garlic separated
• 3 Lemon grass stalks
• 1 Lime halved (If you have access to Kaffir Lime leaves use 3 of them instead)
• 3 Cinnamon sticks
• 1 handful of cloves
• 10 peppercorns
• 1 handful of cilantro
• 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce

Put all the ingredients in a stock pot and add enough water to cover. Bring pot up to a boil then reduce to a simmer for 4 to 5 hours. Strain liquid and discard solids. Refrigerate stock overnight. Remove fat layer. Put stock into appropriate size containers and store in freezer until the stock is needed.

I use this stock for most of my Oriental and Indian dishes.

Caribbean Chicken

I was going through my Foodbuzz mini-feed the other day and I came across The Hungry Mouse's recipe and technique for Rosemary Scented Roast Broiler Chicken. I tried it and it was very good. For the basic technique I don't have anything to add but she suggested several variations for the flavor of the bird. I'd like to add one more.

One of the reasons I add this is that I have seen quite a few jerk rubs but none of them add soy sauce as an ingredient. In my time in South Florida I encountered a lot of Jamaican and Caribbean jerks and most did include soy sauce. There was an influx of Chinese in the late 1800's to the Caribbean and although they are a small minority they have made their influence felt in the preparation of Caribbean foods. There is actually a Jamaican soy sauce that can be bought in stores that specialize in Jamaican foods. Once you know the soy sauce is there, you can taste it in Caribbean fish and poultry dishes.

This is for rubbing one 4 lb chicken

• 1 1/2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2 teaspoon of minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon of grated ginger root
  
• zest of 1 1/2 limes
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon of onion powder
• 1 or 2 dashes of red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want your bird)
• 3 to 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Prepare the chicken per The Hungry Mouses instructions.

Stuff the chicken with crushed garlic and the limes that you have zested and juiced. Combine all the ingredients above and coat the chicken.

Cook at 450 degrees for 45 min.