Pear refresher

A few entries ago I made a fabulous batch of chilled pear soup. This morning I used the remaining portion as a fruity beverage by diluting it 50/50 with the carbonated water we make with our Sodastream.

Daddy's Oatmeal

My husband made delectable oatmeal this morning. He used:

- old fashioned oats
- vanilla soy milk
- cinnamon
- brown sugar
- finely chopped dried pears
- golden raisins
- finely chopped banana

Apple & Potato Pancakes

I got the idea today to make apple-potato pancakes for dinner. So, first the research: standard recipe from Taste of Home and vegan recipe from VegWeb. Mr. Breakfast has a baked version.
The standard version:

Ingredients

• 2 large potatoes, peeled
• 2 medium apples, peeled
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Oil for deep-fat frying
• Sour cream, optional

Directions

• Finely shred potatoes and apples; pat dry. Place in a bowl; add the eggs, onion, flour and salt and mix well.
• In a skillet, heat 1/4 to 1/2 in. oil over medium-high heat. Drop batter by heaping tablespoonfuls into hot oil. Flatten to form 3-in. pancakes. Fry until golden brown; turn and cook the other side. Drain on paper towels. Serve immediately with sour cream if desired. Yield: 10-12 pancakes.

 The vegan one:
Apple Cinnamon Potato Pancakes

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

    5 tablespoon flour
    1 cup shredded potatoes
    chopped apple
    cinnamon to taste
    sugar to taste
    salt to taste
    water - enough to make pancake batter
    oil to fry in

Directions:

Mix potatoes, apple, cinnamon, sugar, salt, and flour in a bowl. Add enough water to make pancake batter. Taste test to make sure its sweet enough.

Heat oil in a frying pan and spoon in the batter. Cook until bottom is golden brown with a few darker spots, then flip until the other side is the same.

I experimented with what to serve this with, but powdered sugar didn't exactly please my taste buds. They were okay alone, but they need something... vegan margarine topped it for me.

I took the recipe for potato pancakes from the vegetable section and tweaked it... I am a new vegan and was desperate for breakfast. Thats why I don't have specifics on the cinnamon, sugar, and salt. Sorry about that.

Serves: 6

Preparation time: 30 minutes

And from Mr. Breakfast:

Apple-Potato Pancakes

(4 servings)    

• 1 and 1/4 cups unpeeled apples - finely chopped
• 1 cup peeled potatoes - grated
• 1/2 cup apple sauce
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon salt

Preparations: Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Spray cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. Spray a large nonstick skillet with nonstick cooking spray; heat over medium heat until hot. Drop rounded Tablespoons of batter 2 inches apart into the skillet. Cook 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until lightly browned.

Place pancakes on prepared cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 15 minutes or until crisp. Serve with additional apple sauce or apple slices.


Healthy and tasty. You'll love these groovy suckers.


Mr Breakfast would like to thank Mr Breakfast for this recipe.

Angel's Apple-Pear-Potato cakes
Ingredients:

• 4 potatoes, grated
• 2 jersey mac apples, grated
• 1 sugar pear, grated
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 tablespoon local honey 
• 1 teaspoon four color pepper
• about 1/4 cup unbleached flour
• canola oil and Le Creuset skillet for frying

I patted the potato dry, but left the fruit wet. Mixed it all up and fried.

Baked Pears

So, it wasn't an exciting food day here in this house.

We all had yogurt for breakfast. My husband had leftover pasta primavera for lunch, I had peanut butter crackers and my daughter had a grilled cheese sandwich, pickles and grapes (with her grandfather.)

We had nachos with cheddar cheese, sour cream, mango salsa and refried beans for dinner.

And I'm baking a poir tarte tatin for my critique group which meets tonight, which I will serve with a nice French wine (Vouvray).

BUT one of our members can't have wheat, so I took some of the pears and placed them in a dish, sprinkled about one teaspoon brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg on them and baked them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. I hope they're yummy.

Très grande tarte tatin

Went to start my tarte tatin and as usual as soon as I went to open the can of pears, our cordless electric can opener died. And we don't have a manual one. The odd thing is, as soon as it dies, it's done. When you plug it in, you have to wait about twenty minutes before you can use it plugged in.

Then I started working on the sugar syrup and I was working on this blog entry at the same time and the sauce reduced down to the point where I thought I had burned my pan. Interestingly, I think this is how it's supposed to work. The color is perfect and it's reduced by about half. And my tatins are always a tad runny so this may explain why... I am too impatient with the syrup and use it prematurely.

After an irate phone call from a friend and a facebook message from another friend experiencing some career difficulties, I can still only get the can half open...

For my syrup, I used about a half cup of the pear juice from the can of pears (I used a church key to extract it) and less than 1/4 cup sugar. I swirled and boiled this until it reduced and turned vivid amber. I poured it back in the pyrex measuring cup and it seemed to be about 1/4 cup syrup. I added another 1/4-ish cup pear juice to the hot pan and used a silicone rubber spatula to scrap the stuff from the bottom of the pan. It all turned amber about immediately though it did not reduce. I pour it into the measuring cup and stirred.

Next, while waiting for my pears:

• Cream 12 tablespoons room temp unsalted butter
• With about 1 cup granulated sugar

Lower speed and beat in one at a time:

• 5 large eggs, also room temp

Now at this point, the Ina Garten's recipe calls for 2/3 cup sour cream. I have a nice amount more than 1/3 cup but no where near 2/3. This is also when you add 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Since sour cream is like a liquid, maybe I'll add a teaspoon of lemon juice. Yeah. I'll do that as I don't have lemons to zest. Oh, and cool... upon closer review of the fridge I found sour cream from the tacos I got via take-out last week... 2 ounces... awesome!

Sift together in separate bowl:

• 2 heaping cups unbleached white flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon iodized sea salt

At this point, I'm going to fight more with my can opener and try to get my pears... I got one 29 ounce can open but it stalled (AGAIN) 3/4 of the way through the 15 ounce can... And I think I'll need another 15 ounce can. UGGH.

Okay, so once that last can is open... (In pried open the nearly open one, like Popeye and his spinach) I can finish nicely arranging my pears, cover them with syrup, combine the dry and wet ingredients pour over the pears and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. This project has already taken 90 minutes and normally, I would have eaten a slice of tatin by now. This is almost too frustrating to bring to International Poetry Night.

Update... 2 hrs later from when this project started and the tatin has finally made it into the oven. I had exactly the least amount of pears as I could get away with. I arranged them nicely and then poured the batter on, only to realize when I got all the batter into the pan that I forgot the syrup.

So I very carefully poured the syrup into the spouts on my Le Creuset skillet and tilted the skillet in hopes of the syrup making it to the pears on the bottom, a slow and steady process. The syrup all disappeared so I can only hope it was successful.

Now we wait for it to come out of the oven and see... fingers crossed.

From the dinner party...

The recipe for pork with apples can be found via the links below... Pear soup is from last week...

Chilled Pear Soup

I wanted to make the chilled pear soup Eileen Bresslin prepared for us in our vegan cooking class at Northampton Community College. But I can't find it. Online or in my cookbooks.

So, I experimented.

I took a big can of pear halves and put them in the blender with the freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon. I added about a 1/2 teaspoon of ginger. I blended. I poured half of it into three bowls and transferred to the fridge to chill.

That's the vegan sample.

I added a quarter cup vanilla-maple- drinkable yogurt from Klein Farm to the remaining stuff in the blender and added the lemon juice from the other half of lemon. This also got sent to the fridge to be taste-tested at lunch.

The verdict from the family:
The vegan option is the most soup like, whereas the yogurt one is more like a dessert or a palette cleanser. Both are equally edible.

Midmorning Tea Party

I normally eat my breakfast around 9:30 a.m. This morning, another rainy day, I whipped out the tea set and made a tea party for my little girl.

I diluted my usual homebrewed iced tea for the teapot, prepared a platter of yesterday's homemade biscuits, and scrambled some eggs. I also peeled a pear.

And voilà... One happy little girl who ate two biscuits, a scrambled egg and a pear.

Sesame Pork with Pears

Tonight for dinner I really wanted to make Dominique Malet's Sesame Pork with Pineapple and Coriander. Except I don't have pineapple. Or coriander. Or sunflower oil. So... I winged it. Big shock, right?

Angel's Marinated Sesame Pork with Pears (served over Asian-style store-bought salad)

Four thin pork chops sliced into stir-fry strips

For the marinade:
Two(2) teaspoons cornmeal
Two (2) tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
One (1) tablespoon champagne vinegar
One (1) tablespoon Chambord
Two (2) tablespoons sesame oil*

Prepare marinade in the order listed, so the liquids dilute the corn meal.

Soak pork in marinade for about 15 minutes at room temperature. I prepare mine on a deep plate and sprinkled liberally with roasted sesame seeds I purchased at Forks Mediterranean Deli. I always get my sesame seeds there, they're way too expensive at the grocery store. Spices, too.

While the meat marinades, prep the following:
For the stir fry:
Fresh garlic or garlic powder
pears
soy sauce
garlic

Prepare a wok with canola oil. Heat oil. Add meat. Stir-fry meat for about three minutes on high. Sprinkle with about two teaspoons garlic powder and a pinch of ginger. Add pears in desired size of chunks and sprinkle with one tablespoon soy sauce. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon ginger and stir-fry for two more minutes, stirring constantly.

I'm going to serve mine over a Dole Asian Crunch Salad. Which I am augmenting with fresh spinach from my garden. This was my favorite meal in the last week or so...

*Special cooking oils and vinegars: like sesame oil, champagne vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and cooking wines can look expensive, but when you use sparingly to produce an authentic flavor or a special meal... it can really make a standard cheap cut of meat taste incredible.

Brought to you by the letter P: Pork with raspberry sauce

I didn't intend it, but dinner became "brought to you by the letter P."

I got home from work and prepped some peas by thawing them in the microwave. Then I sliced about two tablespoons of fresh spearmint from my garden and added it to the peas. I stirred it up, covered it, and set it in the fridge. (Great picnic item, originally from Eileen Breslin's vegan cooking class at Northampton Community College.) Serve the peas chilled.

Then I made some green tea, also with loads of spearmint and poured it over ice in my Princess House glasses. I also got out a bottle of Italian sparkling raspberry wine. I even allowed by daughter to have a small taste for a special post-birthday toast. That was our apéritif.

First course was canned pears (packed in juice, juice reserved for recipe) with some of the sauce from the meat, served over yogurt. (See below for recipe.)

The pork recipe is a variation of Pork Chops with Raspberry Sauce from Allrecipes.com.

Pork with Raspberry Sauce, Angel-style

4 thin pork chops
Mysterious herb seasoning packet from Aldi spinach rigatoni

pinch of fresh ground course sea salt

pinch four-color peppercorns

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 tablespoons juice, reserved from a can of pears

4 tablespoons champagne vinegar, a gift from my mom at Christmas

3.5 tablespoons Chambord

almost 1/4 cup organic raspberry jam from Wegmans

1. Preheat oven to 200. In a skillet, melt butter and olive oil.

2. Combine seasonings, salt and pepper. Rub on pork.

3. Cook pork in skillet on medium, about four minutes per side.

4. Place on plate and keep warm in oven.

5. In warm skillet, with meat juices still present, combine the juice, jam, vinegar and Chambord. Cook until the sauce reduces significantly. It will thicken when it cools. I put about have the sauce on the meat right away and left in in the oven as I served the first course. Then when I served, the sauce had thickened and I placed more on each.

My daughter ate TWO.

For dessert, we had some pumpkin roll. I didn't make that, Gayle brought it for my birthday. Her friend makes it.

Fruit salad with honey-wine dressing

Today I get to make my fruit salad with honey-Vouvray sauce. I probably spent $35 on this fruit salad, so it is not cheap. $5 worth of strawberrys, $5 worth of raspberries, $2 worth of pears, $2 worth of lemons, $1.69 can of peaches packed in juice, $12 bottle of Vouvray, and $8 bottle of honey.

Okay, so the Vouvray is leftover from an earlier day, and technically the recipe calls for dry white wine. But I like Vouvray.

And the honey was a total splurge, but I had to try it, just once... and this French dinner tonight is a special occasion (which I will be fed a multi-course meal for free).

And hopefully, there will be some fruit leftover for the family...

The recipe comes from the internet. I've never tried it. I think it's from one of the "about" sites. I discovered it last year when I went looking for something for one character to make in one of my novels... And this sounded perfect. And the lavender honey is my addition, since the character at hand is a chef, and he's working in a well-stocked kitchen of someone who loves food.

Fruit with honey-wine sauce
http://frenchfood.about.com/od/salads/r/bastillefruit.htm
The web site recommends this for all your "Bastille Day picnics." Yeah. Alright, well, the exact quote is: "Accompany this luscious fruit salad with a baguette, assorted cheese, and a spicy-sweet sparkling dessert wine for a lovely Bastille Day picnic." Ironically, I tracked the original recipe to double-check the fractions and it added a kiwi. A kiwi isn't very French now, n'est-ce pas?

1/2 cup dry white wine
3 tablespoons plus two teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 pint strawberries, hulled
2 pears, cored
2 peaches, pitted
3/4 cup sweet cherries, pitted
1 kiwi (optional)

1. Process the first five ingredients in a blender until smooth. Chill for twenty minutes.
2.Cut fruit and toss with desired amount of dressing.

Now, I bought canned peaches because it is not the right time of year for peaches. For the same reason, I substituted raspberries for cherries. And I am not putting kiwi in a French fruit salad. I already mentioned that I have Vouvray and lavender honey... One review of this recipe suggested that the combination of honey and sugar made it way too sweet, and in light of the fact that I'm also using a sweet wine I will cut back on the honey. Maybe start with two tablespoons plus a teaspoon. But if I add sugar, I'm going to use organic sugar because it seems to have a better flavor. Okay, and my last comment is, am I the only person terrified to attempt "lemon zest?" I always skip it. I don't have a zester, though I do have a mini-grater... Maybe today I'll attempt it.

Banana Pear Vouvray tarte tartine

As everyone knows, I have no issue straying from a recipe. I have made Tart tartine before for this blog, a couple times actually, so if you need the recipe, I suggest clicking Barefoot in Paris (the cookbook it came from) or French or Dessert.

This morning, I greased the dish, laid out my pears and added banana, because normally my tart seems not fruity enough. I also tried to make it prettier than usual. For my syrup, I replaced the sugar/water syrup with the juice from the pears, a couple tablespoons of sugar and Vouvray.

Other than that, I stuck to the recipe and it's in the oven now. I also have a double batch of French bread rising.

When Life Gets Crazy... bake a cake

Yesterday, none of us ate very much. My daughter is recovering from her illness and the insurance company sent people to dehumidify our house. My husband and daughter made a run to Aldi last night, more or less to keep someone out of the way, and they came home with less than $20 worth of stuff, primarily carrots, broccoli, potatoes, coffee, generic peanut butter cereal and potato chips.

So my daughter had a big bowl of cereal and I did what I do when life gets overwhelming: I baked a cake.

I adapted the microwave blueberry cobbler from Eileen Bresslin's vegan cooking class to be a right-side up poire tarte tartin. The recipe has been posted for both, click the Eileen Bresslin link for her recipe and French for the tartin.

Let's see...

Angel's Microwave pear-butter cake

Mix in one microwave safe deep dish pie pan:

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

Add and stir:

3/4 cup milk

Melt:

About about 1/3 to 1/2 cup butter and pour evenly over mixture.

Add pears to top. And drizzle with honey. Microwave for about 15 minutes.

Poire Tatin

Before I went to bed last night, I had the plan worked out in my head. In the morning, the morning of my last French class, which has filled a void in my life that desperately needed plugging, I will construct a poire tatin and get it in the oven before I drive my husband to work. My hope, though it is not practical, is that it might still be warm when I get to class at 10 a.m. Hardly likely, in this winter weather. 

I got the permission of the professor to make this lovely "cake." I'm adapting the recipe, because I'm such a slave to recipes using them so exactly, from the Barefoot in Paris Cookbook by Ina Garten. First off, the recipe is a plum tatin. But I do pears. Because the last time I visited my former college roommate, she took me to a little French restaurant in historic Ellicott City where we had desser

t. I ordered the poire tatin. And I nearly died. In my brief time in Paris, I survived on bread and pastry... but this... this exploded on my tastebuds and melted in my mouth.

Here's an approximation of my adaption of Ina Garten's Plum Cake "Tatin." She says it serves six, and I'm a glutton, but I think it's so rich and buttery it should serve more than that.

Poire Tatin

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus some for greasing the pan;

One large can or two normal cans sliced pears in juice (or fresh equivalent);

1/3 cup granulated sugar, another 3/4 cup sugar;

1/3 cup juice reserved from the can of pears;

3 medium eggs (room temperature, if possible);

1/3 sour cream (now, I can't  remember if I substitute this--I don't usually have sour cream, so do I use half-and-half with a few drops of apple cider vinegar? That's what I used today. It's too early in the morning for this); 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla;

1 cup plus two tablespoons flour;

1/2 teaspoon baking powder;

1/2 teaspoon salt;

Preheat oven to 350. Generously butter a deep-dish pie pan, and arrange the pears artfully in the bottom.  In a small pan, combine the water/pear juice and 1 cup sugar. Heat over high until it turns "warm amber" (or pretty brown). Swirl pan to keep from burning. DO NOT STIR. (But honestly, I forgot and stirred once). Pour evenly over fruit.

Cream butter and remaining sugar until light and fluffy. Lower beater speed and add eggs one at a time. Add sour cream and vanilla. Mix until combined. In separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. With mixer on low, add to butter. Mix only until combined.

Pour batter evenly over fruit and bake 30-40 until toothpick comes out clean. Cool 15 minutes, then invert on flat serving plate. Cake should pop out. Juice may ooze. Serve warm or at room temperature.