cherry almond butter cookies that will blow your socks off

I was invited to a party where the host cannot eat dairy or cane sugar. Not wanting to disappoint - and knowing the crowd was a pretty open-minded bunch of heck-yeah-I-will-try-a-new-weird-food people, I thought I would attempt a dessert. No gluten, no grains, no sugar, no butter, no problem. These cookies were a giant hit. 

I basically made a modified version of The Ambitious Kitchen's Flourless Almond Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies. They are on the cakey-side of cookies, but who cares because they taste awesome and don't have a gritty or weird texture. I am not so subtly looking at you coconut oil and rice flour cookies of sadness. 

Cherry Almond Butter Cookies

1 cup creamy almond butter
4 dates (pitted)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
1/2 tsp kosher salt (plus more to sprinkle on top if you like)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1/4 cup chopped dried cherries
1/4 cup pistachios 

preheat oven to 350F 

1. In a mixer with a paddle attachment combine the almond butter, dates, maple syrup, egg, salt, baking soda, and extracts. Beat on medium speed for 1 minute.
2. Scrape down bowl, beat again for another minute. 
3. Stir in the cherries and pistachios
4. Spoon out 2-3tsp portions of the batter onto lined cookie sheets (parchment is your best bet here). 
5. Bake at 350F for 7-12 minutes
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheets, then you can transfer them to a cooling rack. 

These things taste so so so so good, but they will stick together if you stack them in a Tupperware - you have been warned.

double twist on summer favorites

This is less of a recipe and more of a eureka moment. Same friend who cannot eat any grains, and nearly no carbohydrates, was in town at the start of tomato season. I really love a fried green tomato blt. It is probably my favorite sandwich of all time. The combination of the crunchy fried green tomatoes, soft, sweet ripe tomatoes, plus well there is bacon, which rules in general... it is just prefect.

In attempts to make something similar, and use up stuff in the freezer, I began wondering about the possibility of hazelnuts. I had some left over hazelnut meal from a recipe I tried (hazelnut strawberry tart, pictured on the faceybook, that tasted good but didn't hold together well enough to share the test recipe.)

I combined about a cup of hazelnut meal, salt, ground coriander, ground celery seed, ground cumin, cayenne pepper, toasted onion powder, garlic powder, and ground black pepper. I dipped the slices of green tomato in an egg wash (egg, salt) and then into the hazelnut mix. Fried in bacon fat these rounds wouldn't fool a southerner, but they were tasty and satisfying.

The salad is a slight adaptation of my previous attempt at a blt salad. Instead of a mayo-based dressing I used avocado. Just a whole avocado, the juice of one lemon, and some salt proved to be a fantastic creamy dressing for some mixed greens. Adding chopped, ripe tomatoes and crumbled bacon just took this over the top.

 Be mindful. Bacon-laced foods will attract beasts.

sesame orange ginger candy

A bus ride conversation lead to my mouth-mind wondering to sesame candies. There are the super thin, crisp version from the Asian markets, and then the tiny rectangles I could find in the supermarket penny candy section. (Not to mention the sesame pita with honey that we used to get from the Lebanese place in Lawrence, MA... if anyone knows what that is called - PLEASE SHARE!)

I like both versions, but I went for the crisp-turned-chewy kind here. With the solid suggest from my friend Joe, I added in both grated ginger and orange peel. The resulting candies are good, but I think they should be thinner, and you can see that more sesame seeds are needed to accommodate the honey.

I used this SeriousEats recipe, and tinkered with the flavor.

Sesame Orange Ginger Candy
1 cup of honey
1 cup of sesame seeds
1/4 tsp salt
zest of two oranges (no pith!)
1" of fresh ginger grated super fine
candy thermometer is KEY, well unless you want to do the "drop hot candy into water" test, which is totally valid, I support you
Oil or cooking spray
wax paper or cellophane for wrapping the candies

1. In a skillet, toast the sesame seeds over medium heat until the become fragrant and begin to pop. (could of minutes)
2. Remove the seeds and set them aside in a bowl to cool.
3. Place the honey, salt, peel and ginger in a deep saucepan with the candy thermometer attached.
*To measure the honey, spray a little cooking spray on the inside of your liquid measuring cup - it will make it a lot easier (awesome trick for molasses too). Better yet, if you have a kitchen scale, tare your saucepan and add 340 grams of honey. One less thing to wash!
4. Cook over medium-high heat till the candy thermometer reads 280F.
5. Turn off the heat and stir in the sesame seeds.
6. Pour the mixture into a parchment-lined and greased pan. (I used an 8x8, but the candy came out a little too thick, I would recommend going with a larger pan... unless you have an awesome dental plan.)
7. Allow to cool for 40-60 minutes.
8. Turn the candies out on to a cutting board and cut with a well oiled knife. carefully
9. Wrap each piece with cellophane or wax paper.
Store in an air tight container.

This made about 100 pieces, though some were bigger than others. I realized that the candies were taller than I expected... I think they should be thinner so they are easier to chew. The orange really comes through, but the ginger is pretty subtle. I would add more or use ground ginger next time.

Thanks to Paul for the inspiration! 

Gluten Free Crackers Recipe

I will buy several gluten-free replacement foods, but crackers seem to be the biggest rip-off. Yes, I realize that non-gluten grains and ingredients cost more and usually require special equipment, but I can proudly say I am no longer in the market for $4 boxes of snacks.

This recipe is an adaptation of Elena's Pantry's Sesame Crackers. The biggest difference is that I changed the proportions, rolled them a lot thinner and swapped out sesame for caraway seeds - the little guys in rye bread and optional addition to Irish Soda Bread. The end product looks a bit like Wheat Thins, but the flavor is totally different. They are light, crisp and really caraway-y. It reminds me of eating pumpernickel toasted with butter after school. The only thing that was missing was some really sharp cheese to assist in the downing of these treats.

Caraway Crackers
1 egg
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt (plus more for sprinkling)
1 3/4 cup almond meal
1/4 cup caraway seeds

1. In a bowl, combine the egg, oil, salt and combine with a fork until the egg is broken up and the mixture is well combined.
2. Add in the meal and seeds. Mix well until it forms a dough and everything is wet.
3. Divide the dough in half. Roll 1/8 inch thick between two sheets of parchment paper.*
4. With a pizza cutter or a knife, score the dough into squares - you are in charge of how big you want them. Sprinkle with salt. 
5. Bake at 350F for 6-10 minutes (depending on how thin you got your crackers), until the edges of the outer crackers begin to brown.
6. Allow the crackers to cool, then snap them apart. Store in an air-tight container.

*Parchment paper is not an option. You need it or several silpats to be able to rolls these out super thin and not have them stick. You cannot pick these up raw and transfer them to a cookie sheet, they will bunch up on you. (I tried, it failed)

Plantains

I grew up thinking that plantains were the Spanish word for bananas. I only saw them in the I-don't-know-what-that-is section of Market Basket, with several different types of things that weren't potatoes but grew in the ground, the identifiable coconuts and aptly named ugly fruit. They looked like completely under-ripened bananas or totally rotten bananas. I steered clear, knowing that neither would satisfy my mother's demand for bananas that did not have any brown spots, but still had a hint of green on the ribs.

I am grateful that that section of the store no longer frightens me; that manioc, yucca, cassava and plantains are items I get excited to cook with. (I still have yet go near the ugly fruit.)

Plantains have become a staple. They are the cheapest starch and they are generous enough to turn into dessert if you forget about them in the fruit basket. I love them fried as tostones, and two nights ago, I had some boiled in an El Salvadorian soup, at La Casita, that made me wish I had heard of plantains in soup sooner.

Sweet plantains are an amazing treat. I have only had them baked or fried... the frozen Goya version is actually really great. Tonight I had a lone plantain that I found buried under the fruit bowl-turned-menu/mail bin and decided to cook it up. I modified this recipe for Bananas St-Jacques and was pleasantly surprised by the creamy, warm and soft result.

1 plantain sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
1 tbsp brown sugar
pinch salt
pinch mace
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 can of coconut milk

Everything goes into a pot and is boiled for 10 minutes, then simmered for 20. I threw a splash of vanilla extract in right before serving.

The finished product looked nothing like the photo on the website. It might have been because I turned down the heat when I noticed the plantains sticking to the bottom of the pot. It did't look "good" but it tasted wonderful. I will make these again and again.

Homemade Lara Bars

Panforte was the medieval travel food of the crusaders. It was a dense, spicy fruitcake that was made to withstand travel and nutritionally very calorie-dense; though "calorie" wasn't a vocab word back then. It was a combination of dried fruit, dried nuts, sometimes a little flour, and spices, lots of spices. If you are lucky, you can sometimes find round disks of this delicious treat in specialty shops around Christmas time. Its sometimes translated into English as "fruit cake" but panforte is dense, chewy and delicious, more like a LaraBar than those holiday bricks filled with florescent cherries.

Most panforte comes from Sienna, in Tuscany, and contains some flour, I decided to modify a friend's homemade LaraBar recipe to see if I could concoct my own. I began with pitted dates, raw almonds, dried apricot past (I found it at the Halal butcher shop) and a meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer.

The apricot paste was much stiffer and sticker than I expected. Thicker than a fruit roll-up and stickier than honey, it was not easy to tear apart.

I did my best to pull it into chunks and combined it with the 20 oz. of dates and a few cups of almonds.

I added a small amount to the meat grinder, with the largest holes and the whole thing jammed.

I took everything apart and then ran the mixture through without the disk at the end:

After it was basically coarsely chopped, I put the plate back on, added some cinnamon and ground the mixture:

With my hands, I pushed the strands into a uniform paste:

Traditionally, the bars are cut, but this mixture was too sticky, so I lined muffin trays with plastic wrap:

Then I added a ball of the mixture to each plastic wrap square and loosely folded over the edges:

I then covered the muffin tin with another:

Then PRESSED DOWN, gently.

Take out the pucks of deliciousness, flip them over and push again, for an even disk:

Stack them up:

Save them for a rainy day, or a hike, or whatever. They will keep nearly indefinitely.

The flavors were subtle, and next time I will probably add more spices and more almonds to help the whole thing go faster. I am saving a bunch up for airplane snacks.