Recipes – Harmonious Belly

December 16, 2015

Muskotsnittar, My New Favorite Holiday Cookie

This year I had my act together and registered in time to participate in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. I joined in the fun several years ago and had a good experience then, and I’m really glad I played again this year. In the years that passed the cookie swap has grown and grown and there’s a nice fundraising aspect to it, too—each participant donates a small sum to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a nonprofit involved with funding research and development in the area of pediatric cancer.

Plus, it’s a chance to connect with other food bloggers and enjoy some delicious cookies. Only two of the three folks sent me cookies, but that’s ok—I loved baking mine and sending them out in pretty boxes more than anything.

This year I chose to bake muskotsnittar, a buttery Swedish cookie redolent with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger that develops and intensifies in flavor each day. They happen to travel well, too, and I’m pleased to have learned that my cookies arrived without much, if any, breakage. This recipe for muskotsnittar is from the book Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall—you can buy it here via Powell’s or find it at your local bookstore (here’s mine, Astoria Bookshop—indie beats behemoth Amazon IMO). I have a great affinity for cooking and baking traditional foods from the Scandinavian and Nordic countries, and these cookies made me really happy. Bonus: each batch makes a lot, and they freeze better, so in my book these cookies have it all.

You can find the recipe, here. I made one little adjustment of adding a bit of salt to the dough. Here’s the list of ingredients:

Muskotsnittar
From Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall

2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature (Kerrygold is my fave)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Continue reading “Muskotsnittar, My New Favorite Holiday Cookie”

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015

Sparkly Concord Grape Lacto-Fermented Whey Soda

Each year I get concord grapes in my CSA share, and I never know what to do with them aside from just eating them fresh (I once tried pickling grapes—never again). This year I decided to expand my solo repertoire with these intensely flavored and deeply purple fruit bombs and try making a lacto-fermented whey soda with them. I am happy to say, it was seriously tasty.

For my culture, I used the whey I collected from making yogurt cheese—this kind of cheese is basically the result of hanging plain yogurt (full fat without stabilizers, pectin, or gelatin) in butter muslin for a day or so. They whey drips out and what remains is a thick and tangy spreadable cheese. The whey contains cultures that usher along the lacto-fermentation process. Here’s a shot of the delicious cheese hanging with the whey at the bottom of the container.

To start, I washed and picked all the grapes off their stems, discarding any that were overripe, damaged, or in generally bad shape; firm, ripe, and unblemished grapes were what I was looking for. In the end, I had 6 cups of grapes. I added 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup organic sugar to the grapes and brought it all to a boil, and let that simmer for about 30 minutes. I cooled the mix and then put it through a sieve, discarding pits and skins; what was left was a thick juicy liquid. Continue reading “Sparkly Concord Grape Lacto-Fermented Whey Soda”

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015

For the Love of Ground Meat

Larb, one of my very favorite ground meat dishes, and something I cooked early on here on the blog.

When I started eating meat after 13 years of being a vegetarian, I began with fish (ironically, it was raw fish—sushi—that enticed me off the wagon), moved to chicken (skinless, boneless breasts), and about three years into my omnivore status, I decided it was time to try “the hard stuff”—beef and pork. I found early on in that phase that I gravitated toward ground, minced, or shredded meats, something that still appeals to me to this day. Perhaps it was how those muscle cuts were so obviously animal flesh, with all their explicit fat, bones, muscle fibers and tendons, something I was still apprehensive about, and the grinding and shredding of meat helped mask that reality.

It was also easier to eat, not to mention that when I cooked it, ground meat was, and is, usually much more forgiving, especially when it’s loose; it takes a certain set of skills to cook a steak, a leg of lamb, or a pork chop and not have it turn out tough to inedible. That said, nowadays I do feel comfortable roasting whole chickens, cooking strips of bacon, and cooking an entire filet of salmon in parchment. But I still prefer to cook ground meat, even after 17 years of omnivorous living.

During the quiet months of this blog, I tried a number of ground/minced/shredded meat dishes and found some pretty delicious recipes from fellow bloggers and food sites. When I tried them out, I posted pictures of some of the outcomes to my Instagram account, but it’s worth collecting them here in one place. Here are four that I really enjoyed.

Spicy Garlic Pork and Ground Pork via Two Red Bowls

This is the most recent ground meat dish I made and is the one I’m the most excited about. It combines the classic pairing of eggplant and pork, surrounded by a well-balanced mix of savory, spicy, and sweet notes, creating something that is pretty addictive. Ever since I made it my mind keeps wandering back to it. I suspect that its uniquely memorable flavor has to do with the time the pork sat marinating in soy sauce, sesame oil, as well as the high-quality pastured pork I used. It also has what I consider to be a lot of garlic cloves but in the end the garlic was not overpowering and was just right. I also loved the inclusion of ginger. Continue reading “For the Love of Ground Meat”

April 22, 2015April 22, 2015

The Joy of White Moustache Yogurt

For a little while now, I’ve seen this fancy-looking yogurt in specialty shops in NYC—White Moustache brand. It comes in glass containers, has a hip look (moustaches are big in NYC these days), and is made Persian-style, which is a thick, strained-type yogurt (think FAGE). While shopping at Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street, I came across it and decided to take the plunge—and boy, am I glad I did.

This is the best yogurt I’ve ever tasted—even better than the strained raw yogurt I make at home. It has a wonderful texture—smooth and creamy, yet light, and was perfectly balanced in the sweet/tang department. You’d that that even with sweetened sour cherries, the yogurt would taste more sour than most, but this did not have any harshness to it whatsoever. The natural sweetness of the milk is clear in the taste of the yogurt.

The yogurt itself takes three days to make, and is truly handcrafted. They fill each container by hand and make all the fruit/veg elements. A jar at Murray’s was priced at $5.99, and I think with all things taken into consideration, it’s worth it. Continue reading “The Joy of White Moustache Yogurt”

January 8, 2014January 7, 2014

The Joy of Pudding Cake, Meyer Lemon Edition

meyer-lemon-pudding-cake-in-pan

The other day while strolling around Facebook, a post by the Lemon Ladies for a Meyer Lemon Pudding Cake appeared in my Newsfeed. It looked really good, and I had some Meyers in the fridge so I investigated further. To my delight, I had all the ingredients here at home! Score! It was a done deal.

Pudding cakes are like magic to me. How else do you explain how a single batter splits in two, yielding a light as air cake atop a creamy pudding. Well… science. Continue reading “The Joy of Pudding Cake, Meyer Lemon Edition”

December 3, 2013December 15, 2013

Slow Cooker Apple Butter is Easy and Delicious

The other day a Facebook friend of mine posted an update stating he was going to make apple butter in his slow cooker, with a link attached. I am always interested in learning about new slow cooker recipes, and I thought that making apple butter this way was a brilliant idea! Turns out it’s pretty awesome—delicious and easy, which is always a super combination. And I have a bunch of apples from my CSA, so this is a great way to use them.

I made a half recipe, since that’s what fit into my slow cooker. It starts with peeling and coring apples—I core my apples with a melon baller, which does a fantastic job of scooping out the seeds and stiff parts of the apple. And since I just got my knives sharpened, it was a breeze to peel the apples, though I would love to have one of these apple peelers; when I was younger, my grandmother had one and I thought it was magic! Continue reading “Slow Cooker Apple Butter is Easy and Delicious”

November 29, 2013December 15, 2013

Making a Root Vegetable Ferment

Lately I’ve been feeling like my gut and digestive system could use a tune up (not to mention dealing with a recent bout of heartburn/GERD), so I decided to make a nice root vegetable ferment. My body loves lacto-fermented foods, and I had some beautiful carrots and rutabagas from the CSA this week, plus onion, garlic, and ginger were in the house. I also added some red pepper flakes to make it a little spicy.

I washed off the vegetables (and got rid of the carrot hairs), but didn’t peel them, since there are microbes on the outside of the vegetables that help in the fermentation process. I grated the rutabagas and carrots, chopped the onion into small pieces, and minced the garlic (2 peeled cloves) and an inch chunk of (unpeeled) ginger.

I added a good shake of red pepper flakes—maybe 1/2 a tsp. Then I added 1 tbs of kosher salt, which doesn’t have iodine (that also interferes with the fermentation process). Continue reading “Making a Root Vegetable Ferment”