Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread, or, Banana Bread without the Bananas

Okay, so I'm pretty fond of making quick breads. Extremely fond. I can make real bread, too, but I don't always have the patience or time for it.

I'd been hankering for some time to try making the Chai-Spiced Apple Oatmeal Bread over at Cheap Healthy Good. However, my recent move to Boston means I'm on a tighter budget and no longer have access to my parents' accumulated baking supplies. I gave it a lot of thought, but I just couldn't justify shelling out 10 bucks for a little jar of cardamom that I only wanted for the one recipe. Nor did I feel like buying honey, as I hardly use that outside of baking recipes that specifically call for it either. I decided to start looking elsewhere for my quick-bread fix, for now-- I'm a fan of adapting recipes to ingredients I have on hand, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't attempt to make chai-spiced bread without chai spices.

This weekend I just happened to spot a quick-breads cookbook for fifty cents at a thrift store. Just what I needed-- there had to be something in there I could make.

Flipping through it, though, I realized that although the book contained lots of lovely recipes that I will be trying for many years to come, they didn't quite have the recipe I was craving right now. I wanted apples. I wanted oatmeal. Maybe a little spice. But I wanted a savory, hearty, grainy kind of bread, one I could have alongside a thick stew-- not a sweet dessert bread like the recipes for cinnamon-raisin bread or blueberry bread. Pumpkin bread or gingerbread seemed a better choice for autumn. Other intriguing recipes contained lots of ingredients I didn't have on hand, and half the point was to make something without going on an epic and expensive shopping expedition. What was I to do?

That's when I flipped back to the recipe for Old-Fashioned Banana Bread. This one I had mentally ruled out right away. I have an intense aversion to bananas; always have, always will. For whatever reason, bananas are a food I just cannot eat in any capacity.

But being an experienced baker, for an amateur, I know that any fruit puree can work as a substitute for oil or shortening in a recipe: in banana bread, mashed bananas are used, but that doesn't mean you couldn't substitute applesauce if you wanted to. Banana bread without the bananas? Oh, this was sounding good.

Using the banana bread recipe as a reference for amounts and baking time, I cobbled this together with my own inventive flair.

Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat bran
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or buttermilk substitute (1/2 teaspoon lemon juice plus enough milk to fill to 1/2 cup mark; let stand)
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup rolled or quick oats (not instant)
1 1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened


Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a small bowl, combine flour, oat bran, baking powder, white sugar, and salt.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy; stir in buttermilk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well.

Stir in oats until combined, then add the brown sugar. Make sure there are no lumps! Add in flour mixture slowly. Finally, beat in the applesauce.

Pour batter into greased and floured 9.5" loaf pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes until edges begin to come away from pan and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Bread will be very hot and steamy; allow to cool or it may fall apart upon cutting. Close your eyes and enjoy.

Grilled Peaches

This is the easiest recipe yet on The Weekly Delicious, but the results are just as wonderful as the others.

Perfectly ripe peaches are my favorite food. The texture, and flavor, the beautiful perfume... mmm. Because I love good peaches so much, bad peaches are a huge disappointment. They piss me off irrationally. Instead of warm and juicy and sweet, they are dry and grainy and sour and sad. Bad peaches go straight from unripe to rotten. What a waste of peach potential! However, there is a way to make lying no-good excuses for peaches into something wonderful.

After you are done cooking something delicious on the grill, cut your inferior peaches in half, and cover the cut sides with sugar. Put these skin-side down on the grill. If the grill is still quite hot, put them around the edges, away from the direct heat. You want to cook the peaches through without scorching the skin too badly. Do not flip them. They will bubble so happily, eager to finally live up to their potential. The sugar will melt and macerate the fruit as it cooks, making it even juicier. If you put them on just before you start eating your main course, they'll be ready in time for dessert.

Theoretically, you could eat this with ice cream, but that requires waiting a few seconds more before eating the peaches. Obviously, I have never tried it.

Smoked pork, buccaneer style

This may be one of the few times you'll ever see just meat here on Weekly Delicious. This is what happens when you're a college student with a limited budget and even more limited means of production. A bit of background:

For my Pirates of the World final project, we could do whatever we wanted so long as we could relate it back to pirates. So I decided to apply what I learned about the history of pirates by producing my take on the smoked meat (boucan) that gave the buccaneers their name (boucanier). The nature of this is really kind of haphazard and inexact in many aspects, since... well, pirates were like that. Feel free to scale up or scale down as you like.

Ingredients:
- About 5 lbs of pork loin
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of whole allspice
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of kosher salt (you can use regular salt if you want)

Materials:
- About 6 handfuls of hickory wood chips (or whatever smoking chips you have)
- A grill
- Aluminum foil
- Mortar and pestle
- Meat or probe thermometer

Preparation:
Put your wood chips to soak in water for about an hour. I just used my ever so fancy multipurpose bucket. While the chips are soaking, crush the allspice in the mortar and pestle until it's about look of coarse pepper. Now, why did I make you grind your own allspice when you can just buy preground at the store? 1. It's a different, better flavor and 2. Pirates didn't have preground allspice, silly.

Mix your freshly ground allspice and salt together (you can even give it another smashing with the mortar and pestle, if you want the salt crystals to help you grind up the allspice a bit more) and apply liberally to the pork. Not enough? Just make more, because you want all of the meat completely covered. Made too much? You're not trying hard enough at covering the meat. Let the meat sit in the fridge like that until your wood chips are ready.

Hands on works well.

After an hour, take your wood chips out of the water and put them in the middle of a two large sheets of foil (lay two sheets on top of each other to double them up), leaving plenty of room around the edges. Fold those edges up and towards the middle, while making sure to not seal it up completely. Basically, you're folding this packet up like how an envelope is folded, but instead of closing, you want to leave some space for the smoke to get out of the top. A very flat volcano, if you will.

Light your grill and have it going about as low as you can manage it (I tried for a temperature of about 210° to 220° F). If you're using gas, only light one side of the grill. If you're using charcoal, only put the charcoal on one side. Put your wood chip packet (smoke hole side up) on the flame/coals, under the grill grate.

Cooking:
Take your pork out of the fridge and place your thermometer in the thickest cut you have. Put your meat on the side of the grill that doesn't have the smoke packet under it. You aren't cooking with the direct heat of the coals, you're cooking with the smoke and the ambient heat of the grill.

My smoke packet is in the back, so my meat is in the front.

Close the lid. You're aiming for the pork to be about 170° F. You could probably go a little less if you're impatient or brave, but I'm a bit wary of any meat that's not guaranteed cooked into that safety zone that kills off anything nasty. About half way through the cooking process (170 - your starting temperature, then divide that by 2. That's your halfway cooking temperature point), flip the meat.

Look. Smoke. That's supposed to be there.

I started off a bit colder than I was supposed to (plus it was autumn, so it was colder outside), so I took 4 hours to cook this all the way through. What I ended up doing was checking and recording the temperature of the grill every half hour so I knew how long I had to wait and if I had to make any adjustments. It may seem like forever, and you'll be tortured by the amazing smell, but it's all worth it. When you reach 170° F, remove from the grill and place on a clean platter and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes to keep the juices from running out when you cut the meat.

It's absolutely amazing hot off the smoker, but surprisingly also really good cold from the fridge too (especially if you precut it into snacking sized medallions). It's good reheated, it's good a week or two later too (That's why the pirates smoked the meat, the smoking process, salt, and allspice act as preservatives). It's just good.

Award-Winning Berry Custard Pie

I have just remembered that I am a contributor on this blog and could, perhaps, contribute something. So here's the recipe I made (and adapted) for Night of 1000 Pies:

Yes, this really is an award-winning pie, though I didn't win the award. This recipe won the Washington Post Magazine's annual pie contest in the category of custard pies. The berries really snazz it up. It's also a great recipe because of its adaptability: you can put in whatever berries you like, and because they're going to be encased in a custard, fresh berries are not essential; frozen will work just as well. Enjoy this pie in the dead of winter if you like.

I made this as a strawberry pie, but like I said, any berries will do, in any combination. Go wild.

The original recipe called for simply a 9" pie crust. Possibly a store-bought one. But as I had long ago discovered the perfect pie crust recipe, I just used that, with one special modification of my own: to enhance the sweetness of the pie and the strawberry flavor, I substituted strawberry cream cheese for half of the butter. This can get a little bit tricky because the cream cheese will be softer than the COLD butter you need to use to make a good pie crust, but in the end, it all worked out beautifully. Just be patient, and keep all the ingredients as cold as you can.

Pie Crust recipe, with modifications:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and diced (if using salted butter, omit the 1/4 tsp salt)
  
• 1/4 cup cream cheese, chilled
  
• 1/4 cup ice water

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Rub in butter and cream cheese until mixture resembles coarse crumbs (I recommend using your hands. It's the only way.) Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. (Make sure the water stays COLD.) Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate, adding more flour or ice water as needed. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

The pie recipe:

• 12 oz. fresh or frozen berries (I used Nature's Promise organic frozen strawberries. Defrost berries overnight if using frozen.)
  
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup whole milk (or, if you're me and don't want to buy whole milk because you'll never drink the rest of it, substitute. I had a can of evaporated fat-free milk sitting in the pantry, so I used that. I wouldn't recommend using plain skim milk, though; I think it would compromise the creamy taste needed here)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon flour

Position oven rack in middle of oven; preheat to 375 degrees.
Make sure berries are defrosted fully if using frozen. Retain any juices from the berries.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Stir in the sugar and flour; combine until smooth.
Arrange the berries in an even layer in the unbaked pie shell. (I cut the strawberries into halves here, also.) Pour in any reserved juices.
Pour the egg-milk mixture over the berries. (Warning: You may have more mixture than will fit into your pie crust. This recipe's ingredient amounts may need some adjustments.)
Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes or until the center of the pie has set.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before serving.


Enjoy! I know I did.

Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions

Night of 1000 Pies was about a month ago, but we're just now catching up with recipes. Oops? Here's one of mine, the Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions.

This was originally based on a recipe by the same name in Bon Appetit Magazine. However, in keeping with the theme of Weekly Delicious, there have been some changes. Until my big fancy grocery store moves into town, cheeses are subject to changing. And it's already been established that we've come across the perfect crust recipe, so there were some changes in that way, too. Math was done. It was scary. But you need not be afraid, the work is done for you.

INGREDIENTS:
CRUST:
- 3 cups and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 1/4 cups butter, chilled and diced
- 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons ice water (approximate)
- 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

FILLING:
- 4 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 large onions, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 10 oz skirt steak, cut crosswise on diagonal into 1/4-inch-wide strips [fajita cut steak cut into 1/4 inch strips also works great]
- 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 6 oz coarsely crumbled Stilton blue cheese (1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups) [I used a mix of sharp white cheddar and regular blue cheese]
- 1 large egg white, beaten to blend


PREPARATION:

CRUST (do at least 45 minutes ahead of time):

1. Mix the flour, salt, allspice, rosemary, and thyme together.

2. Incorporate the cold butter into the dry ingredients a handful at a time. A food processor can be used to make the work easy, a pastry cutter is the second best thing, though if you have cold hands that don't mind tedious work, you can just use your hands.
- You want as much flour touching the butter as possible, so you want the butter end up pieces as small as you can manage (If you were to take some of the mix and rub it between your fingers, large chunks of butter shouldn't smear between your fingers)
- Keep any butter you won't be getting to immediately in the fridge or freezer to keep it cold.
- Keep adding butter until you've added all it.
- The finished mix should look mealy, sort of like damp and clumpy breadcrumbs.

3. Add the ice water a tiny bit at a time (a few tablespoons, at most), and completely mix before adding more water
- Only add enough water so that it comes together in ball.

4. Divide the ball into four pieces, and shape those pieces roughly in the shape of a disk. Wrap these disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 45 minutes
- Do not just place dough unwrapped in the fridge, it will dry out and become impossible to work with.


FILLING:

1. In a large pan, heat oil over medium heat. When hot, add the onions.

2. Sauté the onions until deep brown, for at least 30 minutes. Yes, it takes that long.

3. Add the wine and thyme and continue to sauté until most of the excess liquid evaporates (about 15 minutes, your time may vary)

4. Allow to cool in a separate container, and try not to pass out from how amazing this smells.

5. In the same pan you cooked your onions in, cook your beef until it's cooked all the way through. Remove and allow to cool.


PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.

2. Between two sheets of parchment paper (or with a well floured rolling pin), roll out each disk of dough until it is 9 inches in diameter
- Make sure there are no tears in the dough and that the final shape is a circle. The point of these crusts is to hold in your filling, remember?

3. Place all crusts on a piece of parchment paper
- One big baking sheet? Put them all on there, so long as they aren't on top of each other.
- No parchment paper? Just make sure you can move these without them falling apart in the process. Somehow. Be skilled, I know you have it in you.

4. Put 1/4 of the onion filling on half of each round, leaving about an inch along the side. It should be a delicious half moon of onions. On top of the onions, place 1/4 of the beef on each round, making the same shape. And on top of the beef, place 1/4 of the cheese on each.

5. Brush the border (about an inch) of the crust around the filling with the egg white.

6. Fold over the crust to cover the filling, sealing it into a pouch.

7. Brush the top of each pastie with egg white and make 3 small cuts in the top to vent steam
- No one likes an exploded pastie. At least no one will admit to liking it.

8. Still on parchment paper, move to baking sheets.
- Big sheet? Put them all on, so long as there's an inch or two between them.
- No parchment paper? Move them carefully to baking sheets that have been liberally greased.

9. Bake until golden brown (about 30 minutes), and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

10. Cut and serve!


VARIATIONS:

1. Feel free to do this without the herbs and spices in the crust.
2. Try it with some of the same cheese sprinkles on the outside
3. You can do like I did the first time and make two pastie volcanoes instead of four pouches. Just use one round like a bottom crust, and divide the filling in two between the bottom crusts. Lay the top crust on and seal as you would the regular pasties (you will have to stretch the top crust a little).

Lonley Island Chocolate Banana Pie

A bit of a warning before we begin. The Lonely Island Pie is intended to be almost tangy in its bitterness. If you would like to alter the recipe to sweeten it, I would suggest adding either sugar or condensed milk to your melted chocolate before adding that to the bananas. You can also try lightening the chocolate with 2% milk. If you would like to keep the recipe as-is, I would suggest enjoying a slice along with a glass of Merlot, or any similar red wine which goes well alongside bitter, dark chocolate.

Now that we have that out of the way...

Recipe for Lonely Island Pie

--Ingredients

- 1 unbaked pie crust

- 4 ripe bananas

- 4 units of unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz each)

- 2 separate tablespoons of sugar

- 1 dollop of dark corn syrup

- about 30 Nilla Wafers or so

- 2 tablespoons of almond extract

--Directions

- Peel all four bananas and mash them together well in a large mixing bowl. Melt the chocolate in a double-boiler saucepan and mix in the corn syrup. Immediately upon removing the chocolate from heat, pour it into the bananas and mix thoroughly. Add almond extract to mixture and stir.

- In another mixing bowl, crush the Nilla Wafers to large crumbs and then mix in the first tablespoon of sugar.

- Line the inside of the pie crust with the second tablespoon of sugar and then pour the chocolate-banana mixture into the crust, using a spatula to make the surface even. Top the pie with the crushed cookies. Bake the pie in the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool on rack.

Remember what I said about the wine. Enjoy.

Let's Bake A Pie

One of the most talked about events on the Weekly Delicious calendar, Night of 1,000 Pies, will be upon us in only a few days! For my part, I had, until last night, never before made a from-scratch pie in my life. After the tuna hot dish that I made for last semester's, Night of 1,000 Casseroles, I didn't want to be one of the people who will show up to next Tuesday's event offering only money for supplies rather than a finished product. As a disclaimer, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE. We welcome them with open arms full of pie. I saw this however as a chance to learn a new skill and so decided last night to start looking up online pie recipes and make my first attempt so that I wouldn't end up with only hours to go next week and no idea what I'm doing!

For novices such as myself, I've decided to post here the easy pie-crust recipe which was sent to me by my wonderful friend Michelle. Hopefully this will sway even one person who had not intended to bring something of their own to our little get-together to give it their best shot.

Simple and Deliciously Flaky Pie Crust Recipe

--Ingredients
- 1&1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter (half a stick)
- 1/4 cup of chilled water

--Directions
- In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbles. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Chill the ball in plastic wrap in the refrigerator while you prepare the innards of your pie.

- Using a rolling pin, or kneading if one is not available, roll dough out to fit over a 9'' pie plate. Place crust in pie plate and press evenly into the bottom and sides of the plate. Cut off overhanging edges.

...and it's that easy! Now that you have the crust of your pie ready, you can use it for nearly any type of filling that you desire. I myself made a tasty and simple egg custard pie (recipe can be found here: Grandma's Egg Custard Pie).

...but what you make is up to you! For some suggestions, here is a recipe for blackberry pie and one for apple pie which also tells you how to give your pie a really neat lattice top.

Before I finish, here is a list of tips I gathered during my crust-forming experience.

• When they tell you to "cut in the butter," they really mean it. Try freezing the stick of butter and then using the finest side of your cheese grater to create a "butter powder" which will be much easier to fold into your flour.
• I found that after adding in all of the water called for in the recipe, my mixture was still to dry to stick together and form a ball. What I did was to measure out another 4th of a cup (the smallest measurement that my cup would count) of water and then add half of that, discarding the other half. I then kneaded the mixture into the ball I wanted, making sure to fold the inside of the ball out many times, soaking up all of the extra water.
• Not wanting to have my dough tear as I was pressing it into the plate, I accidentally made the crust a bit too thick and thus the sides slightly lower than I wanted. The pie still came out fine, but just a heads up that if you want a thinner crust, you will have to make sure that you work it into the pan thoroughly.
• When you are rolling the ball of dough into a flat "circle, " you want to make sure that EVERYTHING has some flour on it so that your dough will stick to nothing but itself. You want flour on your hands, your rolling pin and the surface you are rolling it on. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Hope that helps. If I think of anything that I missed, I'll edit it in later. Happy baking!