Thursday, September 10, 2015

Cauliflower Cheese Waffles #WaffleWeek2015

Lots of strong and bitey cheddar and tender cauliflower florets make a savory waffle that is delicious for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

I am a sucker for an enthusiastic invitation and folks who are organized. Way back in July, I read a Facebook post from Kim of Feed Me, Seymour proclaiming her love of waffles and inviting bloggers to join her for a celebration of those fluffy squares in far away September. That's what I call planning ahead! (Thanks, Kim!) I had been ruminating already about the possibility of cauliflower cheese waffles ever since I created the loaded baked potato waffles for National Waffle Week last year so Kim’s invitation was just the push I needed. If you love waffles like we love waffles, make sure to scroll down after my recipe to see all the creative variations we are sharing today!

My friend, Jane, has kindly invited me to share a Thanksgiving feast with her dear family twice in the last few years. First when I was all alone and lonely, just before we moved from Kuala Lumpur to Cairo and then again last year when my visit in KL happened to overlap with the holiday. I was delighted to accept because 1. I love her and her family and 2. She makes the best cauliflower cheese. It’s an essential dish in her Thanksgiving line up with its thick, cheesy sauce poured over cauliflower then baked to golden perfection. I could eat just that and be happy forever. I was channeling Jane’s dish when I created these savory waffles.

Ingredients for six or seven square Belgian waffles
Florets from 1/2 small cauliflower (Approximate weight 7 1/2 oz or 220g)
1 cup or 125g flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon mustard powder – I use Coleman’s.
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Fresh black pepper
3/4 cup or 90g grated extra sharp cheddar cheese, plus more to serve, if desired
1/2 cup plain thick Greek-style yogurt
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1 egg
Canola or other light oil for greasing waffle iron

To garnish: a sprinkle of chopped green onion tops

Method
Steam the cauliflower florets for about 5-7 minutes or until fork tender. Remove from the pot and allow to cool in the steamer or in a colander so any excess moisture will drain off. Transfer to some paper towels to dry further.



Once the florets are completely cool and dry, chop them up roughly. You want them in pieces that will show up in the waffles without being so big that they stop the waffle iron from closing.


Combine the flour, sugar, mustard powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and a few generous grinds of fresh black pepper in a large mixing bowl.

Pretend the pepper is there, okay? I did add it after the photo.


Tip the cauliflower pieces into the flour mixture and stir well so they are coated with flour.



Now add in the grated cheese and stir well.




Whisk the egg, yogurt and milk together in a smaller mixing bowl.



Preheat your waffle maker as per manufacturer’s instructions.

Now fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Do not overmix!



Using a pastry brush, grease your waffle maker with a little canola oil.

Spoon the manufacturer’s recommended amount of batter into the center of the lower half of the waffle maker, being careful to leave room for when the batter spreads out as you lower the lid and also for when the waffle starts to rise when baking.



Close the lid and watch for the signal that your waffle is cooking. On my waffle maker, the light goes green when it is ready for batter, red when it is cooking and then green again when the waffle is ready. I leave the waffle in just a little bit longer after the light turns green the second time so the waffles are nice and crispy. But if you like them less crunchy, by all means take them out earlier.

Serve topped with a little extra grated cheese and some green onions, if desired.


If you have any batter left over, go ahead and baked the waffles and store them, wrapped in cling film, in the refrigerator or freezer. These reheat beautifully in the toaster.

Enjoy!



#WaffleWeek2015 Hosted by Kim @ Feed Me, Seymour
Special thanks to Christie of A Kitchen Hoor's Adventures for our lovely graphic!

Are you ready for Waffle Week 2015? Whether you like ‘em sweet or savory, we’ve got you covered!

Appet-affles
Breakf-affles
Waffl-ides
Dessert Dish-affles


.


Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Apple Butter #BloggerCLUE

Low slow cooking transforms apples and a little sugar into apple butter by evaporating most of the juice until it creates a smooth, luscious spread that is concentrated appleness personified. And, despite its name, is completely dairy free.

It’s Blogger C.L.U.E. time again, when I get assigned a blog to hunt through to look for recipes which fill September’s “clue” or theme: fall fruit. I’m not ready for pumpkin yet (Is pumpkin even a fruit?) and frankly I’m not a fan of pears so I was hoping that A Mama, Baby and Shar-Pei in the Kitchen would have some apple recipes. I was not disappointed.

The eponymous mama behind the blog is Alice who is a fellow expat, living first in England – before I knew her so I had some catching up to do – then back in the US for a few years, and now she is making a home in Japan. Sadly, her first child, the Shar-pei, is no longer in the kitchen but over the years one baby became two so I am sure her household is just as crazy.

I had a hard time choosing from Alice’s many apple recipes. Tipsy apple pie with rum or her Ever American apple pie? Both looked delicious. Or baked Apple-y Donut Holes? Alice lived for many years in Washington state so she is really, really fond of apples. I was so tempted by her homemade apple chips and her apple cheddar scones as well, but as you can see, I finally settled on apple butter, which Alice makes in a crockpot.

Her original recipe calls for 30-60 apples so I scaled mine back to a more manageable level, but it is so good that next time I just might go all in! Oh, and I also added some lemon just to add a little more tartness because I used only Red Delicious instead of a mix of apples and I subbed ground ginger for cloves and allspice.

Ingredients
1/4 cup or 60ml fresh lemon juice
11 apples - about 4 1/2 lbs or 2 kg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 cup or 200g sugar

Method
Pour your lemon juice into the crockpot.

Peel, core and slice your apples, putting all the sliced bits in the crockpot as you go.

Give it a stir every now and then to mix the apples through the lemon juice.



Add in your spices and sugar and mix well. Alice’s instructions said to cook on medium for 10 hours, stirring occasionally, then turn to low but my crockpot only has two settings - low and high - so I put it on low. She also said that if the apples are cooking down too fast or burning to turn it to low so I figured low was better than high if you only have two choices.



I started a little late in the morning so I turned my crockpot on about 11 a.m. stirring the apples every hour or two all day long. By 9 p.m. that evening, they had cooked down and softened but they certainly weren’t anywhere near apple butter or even applesauce. So, following Alice’s advice, I left them on low overnight.



It was glorious the next morning to wake up to a whole house still smelling of apples and cinnamon. I used my whisk to break the apples down completely into sauce; they were still quite juicy though. You can use an immersion blender, as Alice did, but I found the whisk worked beautifully since the apples were already so soft.



Leave them on low for another few hours, with one change of method. Every time you take the lid off to stir the crockpot, use a dry cloth to wipe the condensation off of the inside of the lid, rather than letting it run back into the pot, which is what I had been doing.

Could I have turned the crockpot up to high at any point in this process to speed things up? Sure, probably so, but I enjoyed the leisurely stirring and the completely relaxed, no stress method more. Because even if I was just reading a book or watching tv, I was being productive! Most importantly, I had time to take a few photos of a spectator outside my kitchen window. I've been reliably informed that he's a bee-eater but he also seems to eat other bugs and ants, bringing them all up to the windowsill and knocking them on the concrete to remove stingers and extract venom.



At the 24-hour mark, I ladled the hot, thick apple butter into sterilized jars. You should do the same to yours as soon as they reach a consistency you like. Remember that the apple butter will thicken up a little more as it cools.



Aside from peeling, coring and slicing the apples, this apple butter feels almost effortless and the full jars make that time spent well worthwhile. Thanks, Alice!



Enjoy your apple butter spread on buttered toast or stirred through some plain yogurt. It also makes a great filling for tarts!


Are you ready for fall fruit? Check out all the lovely recipes my fellow Blogger C.L.U.E. participants are sharing today.

.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Bulgur Wheat Bread #BreadBakers


A tender loaf with a welcome bit of nutty chewiness from the bulgur wheat, this yeast bread has a soft crust and slices up beautifully.

As much as my grandmothers loved cooking and even baking, I don’t remember either of them ever baking bread. The French influence in our Louisiana heritage did mean that bread was important; you just bought it at a bakery. From the time I was tiny my mom told me stories of when she was younger and she would bring a stick of butter along to the bakery to pick up a fresh hot loaf just so she could butter the bread and eat it immediately in the car. Who wants to wait? The only bread I remember in our house when I was growing up was white sandwich bread and French bread – still white inside – preferably baked by the southern Louisiana institutions of Evangeline Maid in Lafayette and LeJeune’s in Jeanerette, respectively. Even today, my mom’s freezer in Houston usually has a loaf or two of LeJeune’s delicious French bread, still made by hand, for when she needs a bread and butter fix.

When I started dating my husband and was introduced to his dad and stepmom, I finally met a woman who baked bread weekly, more often that that, in fact, if she had bread loving visitors (like us!) because her home-baked bread was the centerpiece of every lunch, surrounded by cheese and sliced meat and condiments and salad. And breakfast, more often than not, included toast. I wrote at length about Fiona’s wonderful bread for the inaugural post of Bread Bakers exactly one year ago, so I won’t go into it again here, except to say that hers was also the first time I remember eating and loving whole wheat bread instead of white. She started me on the road to baking my own bread and even buying whole grain breads. They are just so much more flavorful! (Although it's still hard to beat a pimento cheese sandwich on Evangeline Maid.)

This month our Bread Bakers challenge to bake bread with whole grains was set by our able host of Cali’s Cuisine. I decided to kick mine up a notch by adding bulgur wheat as well. It was a very good decision. This recipe, adapted from one in the New York Times online, makes two nutty deliciously healthy loaves and freezes beautifully.

N.B. You'll need three and a half hours of resting or rising time, in addition to almost one hour baking so start early in your day!

Ingredients - for two standard loaves
For the sponge:
2 packets active dry yeast (1/2 oz or 14g total)
3 cups or 710ml warm water
3 tablespoons mild honey
1 cup or 200g coarse bulgur wheat
2 cups or 250g strong white bread flour
1 cup or 120g wholemeal bread flour

For the bread dough:
1 bread sponge recipe (see above)
1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil, plus a little extra for oiling bowl and baking pans
1 scant tablespoon salt
2 cups or 240g wholemeal bread flour, plus additional as necessary for kneading

Method
In a large bowl, combine the yeast and warm water and honey, and stir until dissolved. Leave it for a couple of minutes to make sure that the yeast is reacting and making some small bubbles before proceeding.



Add in the bulgur wheat and leave to rest again for another five or so minutes.



Now whisk in the white bread flour and the wholemeal bread flour one cup at a time. Keep stirring or whisking for at least two minutes after all three cups have been added. You'll end up with quite a thick batter.



Scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover it with cling film. Leave to rest in a warm spot for one hour. It should bubble up quite dramatically.



Fold the oil into the sponge along with the salt and then fold in one cup of the wholemeal bread flour.



Sprinkle your clean work surface with flour from the second cup of wholemeal bread flour and scrape the dough out of the bowl.



Here’s where it gets sticky. I found that using a stainless steel dough scraper really helped with this part of the process.

Sprinkle the dough with more wholemeal bread flour. Use your scraper to turn and fold and “knead” the dough, until the last of the cup has been added.

Keep folding and kneading for about 10 minutes, adding just a little more flour as needed, until the dough springs back when you press it with a finger. It will still be quite sticky.

Wash out your bowl and grease the inside with a little canola oil.

Scrape the dough into the bowl and turn it over to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl again with cling film and leave in a warm place for one hour.



Punch the dough down, cover it again and leave to rise for another hour.

Grease two bread loaf pans. Divide the dough into two equal parts and place them in the greased pans. Sprinkle with some wholemeal bread flour and put them in a warm place to rise for about 30 minutes.



Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C at some point in that 30 minutes. Mine takes forever to get to temperature so I start about 10 minutes in. You do what you need to do.

When your 30 minutes are up and your oven is preheated properly, cut some quick slashes in the dough with a very sharp implement.



Bake for about 50-60 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 190°F or 88°C on an instant read thermometer or the top is golden and the loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Allow to cool for a few minutes and then remove the loaves from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack.



Enjoy!



More whole grain goodness from my fellow Bread Bakers:


#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our of lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.



.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Creamy Coconut Popsicles

Two ingredients are all you need to make these creamy coconut popsicles: Sweetened condensed milk and coconut cream. Well, and freezing time! So easy and delicious!
 


This week my Sunday Supper group is anticipating Labor Day in the United States by sharing no-labor recipes, with plenty of make-ahead or simple-to-prepare dishes and drinks that will leave you plenty of time to relax and enjoy the holiday tomorrow! I had no idea what to share for this event until I remembered some coconut popsicles I made a couple of months back as an experiment that had turned out with gratifying success. So I made them again for real. 

I wanted to add actual fresh coconut to them but was discouraged by my younger daughter who prefers her ice cream without “bits” in it. So that coconut you see is just for show. With only two ingredients, both from cans, these creamy popsicles practically make themselves! Feel free to add fresh coconut to yours, if you can be bothered. They are absolutely coconutty, just sweet enough and perfect as is. And even the dog agrees.


Ingredients

1 can (13.5 oz or 400ml) unsweetened coconut cream – not milk!
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk  - 260g or 6 3/4 oz

Equipment needed:
Popsicle molds (or paper cups, popsicle sticks and cling film)
Deep freezer

Method
Pour or scoop the coconut cream into a large mixing bowl, preferably one with a spout. Whisk it until the cream is smooth and homogeneous.

Add in the condensed milk and whisk again.



Pour the liquid into your popsicle molds (or paper cups, then cover with cling film and insert a stick in the middle) and freeze until solid – this will take at least a couple of hours but overnight is even better.



When ready to serve, run the popsicle mold (or paper cup) under some warm water to release the popsicle.


Enjoy!



Whether you are celebrating Labor Day this weekend or just love the idea of no-labor recipes, this is the list for you!

Savory Snacks and Sides
Labor Free Main Dishes
Sweet Treats and Drinks


Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Duxelles #FoodieExtravaganza


The earthy flavor of mushrooms is concentrated by cooking them down in a mixture of butter and shallots, then white wine and finally cream is added, creating a thick, rich sauce that is an essential component of classic dishes like Beef Wellington. Or you can just eat it with a spoon.

Here’s the thing about mushrooms for me. Fresh and clean, they have a soft yet almost a snappy texture to them, perfect for slicing into salads. Slightly cooked, they get all wet and even kind of slimy. So, I’m either going to eat them raw or I’m going to cook them down till all of their own water has evaporated, like in mushroom gravy or duxelles.

I made this batch of duxelles a while back because I need it as a component for another recipe that I never quite got around to posting. It had been hanging out in my To Be Shared folder for quite some time when Wendy, this month’s host for Foodie Extravaganza, announced that our ingredient for September would be mushrooms. Apparently September is National Mushroom Month in the US. Who knew? I love it when I am prepared for a group post completely by accident.

If you’ve never had duxelles, let me encourage you to try it. It makes a great thick sauce over rice or pasta. Spread it on crusty bread for snacks or toasted rounds of baguette for appetizers. You can fold it in omelets, roll it in crepes, stuff it in ravioli or stir it through the pan juices of a roast to make the perfect mushroom gravy. Just to mention a few ideas I love. Or, as previously mentioned, you can just eat it with a spoon.

Ingredients – for about 1 1/2 cups or 375g duxelles
3 oz or 85g shallots
1/3 cup or 75g butter
12 oz or 340g mushrooms
1 cup or 240ml dry white wine
1 cup or 240ml whipping cream
Sea salt
Black pepper

Method
Peel and finely chop the shallots. Trim the hard stem ends off and finely chop the mushrooms as well.



Sauté the shallots gently with the butter until they are soft and translucent.



Add in the mushrooms and simmer until they are cooked down and release their liquid.


Keep simmering, uncovered, until liquid is almost all gone. Add the white wine and simmer again until almost dry.





Add the cream, a sprinkle of sea salt and a few good grinds of fresh black pepper.



Stir and then simmer a little while longer. It's going to start thickening up as the moisture evaporates. Try not to eat it all with a spoon at this point, but it's sooooo good.


Keep simmering until the mixture is looking almost dry once more. Taste for salt and pepper and add more to your taste, if necessary.



This can be refrigerated for a few days in a tightly covered container. It’s not beautiful but it sure is tasty. If you are using it in a beef Wellington, I highly recommend chilling it first.

Enjoy!



Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for hosting Foodie Extravaganza this month and for giving me the push I needed to share one of my favorite recipes.

Have a look at all the other great mushroom recipes we have for you this month:


Foodie Extravaganza is where we celebrate obscure food holidays or cook and bake together with the same ingredient or theme each month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook page Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

If you're a reader looking for delicious recipes check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board! Looking for our previous parties? Check them out HERE.

.