HERMITS!

Those of you who are Balls and Walnuts stalwarts know that published recipes are for . . . jeez, almost said peasants, but that’s pretty classist of me. Published recipes are for beginners. WE ARE NOT BEGINNERS. We are intuitive, creative daredevils in the kitchen. Sometimes you end up with a disaster. And sometimes you end up with a masterpiece.

BEHOLD.

Now stroll on over to the inspiration recipe, King Arthur Flour’s Good ‘n Chewy Hermits, and look at their photo. Those things look like saltillo tiles, not hermits. Y’all are looking at what a hermit should look like.

Feel free to try their recipe, but I’m here to tell you that these sumbitches are tastier and healthier (not healthy. Healthier) than the King’s very own.

Ingredients
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened at room temperature (one stick)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger (powder)
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups of figs, trimmed, chopped, hydrated (see instructions)
1/2 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup chopped pine nuts

I suspect you could substitute regular whole wheat flour without any problems. You could also vary what dried fruits you use, although I like the fact that dried figs are less sweet than dates, for example. The nuts are also up to you — 100% walnuts would be fine, as would hazelnuts or macadamias. Peanuts would be a little weird. I had some pine nuts in the freezer so that’s what I went with, and I think they add an interesting dimension. Pistachios would also be interesting (I’d probably use the same proportion, 3:1 walnuts to pistachios).

Instructions

1. Trim the nasty stems off the dried figs and chop into chunks about the size of two or three raisins. Place in a 2-cup measuring cup, then top off the cup with the raisins. Over this, pour 1/3 cup of boiling water. Cover with saran wrap, and shake it carefully to wet all of the figs. Feel free to do this in a bowl, since it’s easier to stir the fruit. Let this cool to room temperature.

2. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan with nonstick cooking spray.

3. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat together brown sugar and butter until smooth. Beat in the spices, salt, baking soda, vanilla extract, and almond extract until well combined. Add the flour one cup at a time. This will look very dry — don’t worry. Add the molasses and continue to beat until combined. Finally, add the fruit with the water it’s been soaking in and continue to mix at low speed until well combined.

4. Press the mix into the 9 x 13 inch pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the hermits begin to pull away from the edges. Cool on a rack. Cut into bars once everything is at room temperature.

5. According to the King, these will keep at room temperature for several days, longer if you freeze them.

Enjoy!

D.

Weight Watchers 2 points/slice Banana Bread

Featuring my new best friend, teff flour, used in Ethiopian cuisine to create injera. Teff is gluten free, so first thing you have to do is add loads of gluten to this recipe. (more…)

Guinness Pumpernickel Loaf

Recipe below the cut.
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Lamb Maqlubeh

Gotta get this one down before I forget what I did. Recipe below the cut.

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Best lemon ricotta pancakes ever

Best lemon ricotta pancakes EVER!

I suspect most folks’ experience of whole grain pancakes is woeful. I’ve sampled these at many breakfast joints, and they’re almost always flat, leathery, and *ugh* wholesome-tasting. Buckwheat pancakes have great flavor, but (A) they’re almost impossible to find, and (B) when you do find them, they’re usually pretty dense. The trick, as we discovered a few years ago, is to mix the buckwheat flour 1:1 with oat flour (we buy Bob’s Red Mill brand for both — mix ’em together, store in a Tupperware canister in your pantry. It won’t last long; you’ll probably use it up before it goes bad).

Lemon ricotta pancakes, on the other hand, are light and airy (usually) but are almost a little too insubstantial. When I eat them, I think, “This is like a crepe. Good vehicle for something else, but is this really breakfast?” Solution: combine the whole grain approach with the whole lemon ricotta shtick and now you have a PANCAKE!

The proportions below make enough pancakes for two people. Recipe below the cut.

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Best Matzo Ball Chicken Soup

By popular request . . .

First thing you need to know: this isn’t easy. It’s not hard, either, particularly if you have any culinary skills. But it’s not the sort of soup you can whip up as an afterthought, nor will it soar without some TLC. Look, you’re making your own damn stock, okay? And you’re going to take pains to wring as much flavor as you can from each ingredient.

Let’s begin with the chicken.

If this were Facebook, I could convince you that the ability to read sideways makes you smarter than 98% of other humans. But this is old media. This is a BLOG. I expect you to be able to read sideways. And if you can’t cope with sideways photos, buh-bye. I’ll fix it later.

Back to cooking.

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Porkstrami: finished product, untasted, so if there are no more posts you’ll know I died of food poisoning.

About ten days ago, I described how I went about brining my pork shoulder. Here it is, getting ready for its salty bath:

pork shoulder, rinsed and ready for the brine

It’s in a plastic garbage bag. I added the brine, tied it off, and kept it at approximately 36 degrees F for ten days. Every day, I turned it or shook it up a bit.

Yesterday was day 10, to be precise, so I removed the boneless shoulder from the brine, rinsed it off, dried it. Then I dusted it liberally with paprika and ground black pepper, and left it in the fridge for another day to let the outer surface dry. Here it is, ready for the grill.

pork shoulder plus simple dry rub

I banked the coals to one side, and used two to three cups of soaked hickory chips to create the smoke. The pork sat suspended on a grate at the opposite end of the barbecue.

ready to smoke!

Eight hours later, it smelled like the real thing and looked like the real thing, but the internal temperature was only 120 degrees F. I sliced a bit off one end, and it tasted great, but still looked raw. I popped it in the oven at 250 degrees F, and left it in (about two hours) until the internal temperature was 160 degrees F. And here it is:

the finished porkstrami, cooling

There are a number of questions yet to be answered. Will it kill me? Make me wish I were dead? Will the middle be as tasty as the end bit I sampled earlier today? Is it smoky enough? Too salty, not salty enough?

And if this works, why not make lambstrami?

D.

Porkstrami Extravaganza, Part the First!

No, I haven’t been blogging much lately. Yes, I’ve been writing — editing, to be precise. I finished the second/third pass-through on Gator & Shark, and I’ve sent it to an editor. Now I’m trying to breathe new life into The Brakan Correspondent. It’s rough; I finished it eight years ago, and have been fiddling with it ever since. I have some great set-pieces in this novel. Just a question of cutting away the crap to find the novel within.

But on to the food. I’m going to give you a play-by-play of my latest grand experiment: porkstrami! I’m allergic to beef, I miss pastrami, and I’ve heard that pork pastrami is at least as good as the real thing. Unfortunately, porkstrami isn’t the sort of thing you can get mail order. You have to make it yourself, and that means corning, smoking, and cooking the pork.

I chose a seven-pound pork shoulder. For the brine, I’ve modified from Alpoe the Mad’s recipe (mostly because I don’t like juniper berries). Here’s mine:

One gallon of water
1/2 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of kosher salt
1 tablespoon of “pink salt” (see below)
2 cloves
Four bay leaves, broken up
8 garlic cloves, crushed
5 whole allspice berries
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
2 tsp freshly ground coriander
1 cinnamon stick
1 slice of ginger

Boil the ingredients, then cool the brine to room temperature. Add the brine and the pork to a garbage bag and put it in the refrigerator. I’m going to let it brine for at least ten days. Every day, I will shake it up a bit to redistribute the ingredients.

Pink salt: I bought this from our local butcher, who had no idea what it was or how it was used (I think he was a junior butcher — took him ten seconds to bone the pork shoulder, but he was lost on the pink salt). According to Alpoe the Mad’s blog, this is 6.25% sodium nitrite. Kinda necessary, I suspect.

I’ll keep you posted, with pictures too once it gets interesting.

D.