Cooking and Eating Local

It's not often I find a dessert recipe that really calls to me. After all, we have so many good places to eat in Seattle. Two different cupcake places, several excellent bakeries, and a whole host of restaurants that serve almost any type of dessert you can think of. But when I saw these cupcakes on Slashfood, I knew I had to try them. I made the curd and cupcakes on Saturday and assembled everything on Sunday.

Now, I could have just followed the recipe to the letter, but J's diabetic. So I wanted to see if I could adapt these to be low sugar. If that wasn't enough of a challenge, these were a test for a party we're going to next weekend. The additional catch? The hostess is allergic to wheat. So I also needed to make these without flour.

So... do you think I did it? Well, here's a picture of the result.

Without further adieu... onto the recipe. I'll separate the recipe in to the three parts (lemon curd, cupcakes, and meringue). All organic ingredients will be marked with a *. All local ingredients will be marked with a &.  

Lemon Curd

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice *
• 3 large eggs *&
• 1 large egg yolk *&
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Splenda
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest *

NOTES: I should have used organic butter, but I was weak. Tillamook butter was on a fantastic sale at our local market, so I bought a pound. The eggs were local, from Skagit River Ranch.

Directions:

Put a couple cups of water into a saucepan over medium heat until the water is simmering. In a glass bowl that will sit nicely over the saucepan, whisk the lemon juice, eggs, egg yolk and sugar until smooth. Cut the butter into chunks and add it to the bowl. Place the bowl on the saucepan and whisk gently. Cook the curd until it thickens and you can see a ribbon of curd hang off the whisk.

In my case, this took about 25 minutes, but it could take as few as 10. Remove the bowl and strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Add lemon zest, stirring gently to fold. Cover and chil thoroughly.

Cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rice flour *
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest *
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup Splenda
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter *
• 1 large egg *&
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup milk *&

Directions:

After preheating the oven to 375, combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl. In a large bowl, rub the lemon zest, sugar, and Splenda together with your fingers to combine. When you're done, the sugar mixture should have a yellowish tint.

Add the softened butter and cream together until light and fluffy. Or... that's what is supposed to happen. When you're using Splenda, light and fluffy is sort of wishful thinking. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for another minute. Now, alternate the flour mixture and the milk a little bit at a time. Begin and end with the flour mixture.

When you're done, the batter will be a bit like cream of wheat. At this point, I don't mind telling you, I was worried. Cupcake batter should be smooth and thin. Or at least that's what it's always looked like to me when I used one of those box mixes. I persevered through my fear however, and lined 18 muffin cups with foil. I filled them about half full and slid them into the oven.

20 minutes later I had cupcakes.

Fast forward 24 hours and it's Sunday!

Meringue

Ingredients:

• 3 large egg whites *&
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until just before the soft peak stage. Add the sugar a little bit at a time until the meringue has reached stiff peak stage.

Assembly

I took a paring knife and started carving up the cupcakes. I carved a cone shape out of each one. Oh! The horror! It's a cupcake massacre.

The casualties of war were tasty though...

I took a dollop of lemon curd (about a tablespoon and a half) and placed it in the hollowed out cupcake. I topped each cupcake with meringue.

After preheating the oven to 400, I put the topped cupcakes on a cookie sheet and baked them until the meringue was just browned. This took about 6-7 minutes.

Ta-da! Cupcakes!

So.......... how did they taste?

Overall, I give these a 7. When I asked J for his rating, he gave them 7.5. The flavor was very good. I really couldn't tell that they were gluten/wheat free or had very little sugar. There wasn't an aftertaste as some Splenda baked goods can have. The meringue was light and fluffy and the lemon curd had a nice tang to it. But... the cupcakes were a little dry and the lemon curd could have been just a tad bit firmer.

I'm going to make these again on Friday for the party we're attending next weekend. I'll hope that the lemon curd gets a bit thicker and I'll bake the cupcakes for a minute or two less.

Overall, these were a success.

Well, Cook Local has moved anyway. We just opened up a brand spanking new website at www.cooklocal.com!

I'll probably keep updaing this blog as well when I make a post... at least for a little while. But in the future, go to www.cooklocal.com. I promise we'll be updating it more often!

So we've been playing around with the frittata recipe each week. We've tried varying the eggs, the milk, and the cheese. They are always good, but they needed something. Plus, they were wet.

Today, we made the following modifications:

• 5 eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 4 ounces reduced fat cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup crumbled bacon
• 1/2 cup cooked, chopped red peppers
• 1 dried cherry bomb pepper, crushed

The nutrition information keeps getting better and better.

• Calories: 146
• Fat: 7.5 grams
• Carbs: 2 grams
• Protein: 17 grams
• Fiber: Negligible

In addition to varying the ingredients, I beat the living hell out of the eggs. I think that helped them rise a bit more and fluff. The only problem tonight is that I forgot to add the feta until I had already started cooking the frittata's. I think they would have been even better if I'd been able to beat the cheese in with everything else.

They were definitely fluffier and drier this time.

Stay tuned for more updates!

(AKA Pecan Crusted Salmon)

This recipe has made it into the category of "one of our standby recipes". The only problem is that we rarely make it. I'm not sure why, except for the fact that shortly after we discovered it, we bought a grill and started cooking almost all of our meals on that. But when it's cold and rainy outside, you don't want to spend any more time outside than you absolutely have to.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard (Moutarde de Dijon)
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 5 teaspoons honey (we use Agave nectar for a lower glycemic index)
• 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
• 3 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
• 6 fillets of salmon (4 oz each)
• Salt and Pepper
• Lemon wedges (optional)

So examining our success at local shopping... it seems that we were quite unsuccessful today. The Dijon mustard is from France. The only organic and local ingredient is the butter. But, you could make this recipe with more local and organic ingredients, especially in the spring and summer when salmon is fresh.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In one bowl, mix the mustard, melted butter, and honey. In a second bowl, mix the bread crumbs, pecans, and the parsley.

Place the salmon fillets in a greased baking dish. Season them with salt and pepper. Don't these fillets look good? I did give a quick thought to scraping the recipe and just cooking the salmon plain.

But, a calmer head prevailed as John started brushing the salmon with the mustard/honey/butter mixture.

Cover the top of each fillet with the bread crumb mixture.

Bake for 10 minutes or until salmon is done. A good guideline is for every inch of thickness, bake the salmon for 10 minutes.

We served this with a side of roasted hazelnut squash. We bought the squash from the University District Farmer's Market. We quartered it, scraped out the seeds, and roasted it for about an hour at 400 degrees.

Our plan was to take the squash out of the oven and cut it out of it's peel. Once I picked up a piece of the squash however, that plan flew out the window. I basically had to scrape the squash out as best I could. We brushed it with melted butter.

By then the salmon was ready. Here's dinner! Look Mom! I ate squash. Willingly!

Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day. Yet John and I rarely eat it. Our schedules just don't allow it. When you get up and immediately go to the gym, you don't want a heavy breakfast and when you go from the gym to work, you can't really take along scrambled eggs or oatmeal. So I've been pondering what I could make for breakfast that would be portable, have a good mix of protein and carbs, and would work for John. Hence... frittata-a-go-go, or Muffin MacEggs, or OmFins, or Scrambled Quickfins, or Atkins Muffins (we had trouble coming up with a name).

Ingredients

• 7 eggs
• 1 cup sauteed mushrooms
• 1 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 4 slices of bacon
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 diced red bell pepper, sauteed
• 1 bunch green onions, sauteed
• Salt and Pepper
• Crushed red pepper

The eggs were local, from Skagit River Ranch. If you're in the Seattle area and want eggs from Skagit, you need to get to the farmers markets early, especially in the summer. There is usually a line for their eggs. During the winter though, they can usually be had relatively easily. The mushrooms, bell pepper, and green onions were organic, but I'm not sure any of them were local. The crushed red pepper came from a bottle and was definitely neither organic, nor local. The cheese was Dubliner Irish Cheddar. The bacon was also from Skagit. We bought the raw milk from Sea Breeze Farms.  I used to be hesitant about buying and using raw milk. I don't honestly like milk, and raw milk made me nervous. But the more I read, the more comfortable I become with the idea of raw milk.

As I pulled this recipe out of thin air, I didn't have any instructions and had no idea if these would even work. John cooked up the sliced mushrooms and the diced pepper and onions. I mixed all of the ingredients together in the KitchenAid and filled our greased muffin tin with the result. This recipe made 12 muffins.

We baked them for about 25 minutes at 375. Here's the result.

So, how did they taste?

I would call these a success. I had a cold one for a late breakfast today and it was good. I couldn't really taste the cheese, but I could taste the bacon and the red pepper flakes. John doesn't like eggs, but even he was willing to eat these. Though we both agreed that they needed a little tweaking. We'll try them again this weekend and make the following modifications.

• Grate the cheese finer and use half of it to line the muffin cups, creating a cheesy "shell" for the frittata.
• Use a stronger cheese.
• Mix in some ancho chilies in adobo sauce (pureed).
• Switch to 6 eggs and 3/4 of a cup of milk.

Nutritional Information:

• Calories: 175
• Fat: 13.5 grams
• Carbohydrates: 1.5 grams
• Protein: 9 grams
• Sugar: 1.05 grams

Other notes... using skim milk and a lower fat cheese would definitely help here. In fact, here's the nutritional analysis with skim milk and reduced fat cheddar cheese.

• Calories: 134
• Fat: 9 grams
• Carbohydrates: 2.25 grams
• Protein: 9 grams
• Sugar: 1.3 grams