Archive for February, 2010
Homemade Onion Rings
Oh the humble onion. How often I have overlooked thee in my winter local food stores. You might ramp up the flavor in a soup or an omelet, nevertheless I just wasn’t thinking about what you might do as the star of the show. But as we enter the “leanest month” – March – for locavores, I gave you a piercing stare as you hung there in your little mesh bags from a peg in my dry cool dark basement where you hold up indefinitely without a peep of complaint. What can I do with you?
Caramelized onions or French onion soup would perhaps be more predictable fates for a large stash of onions like that leftover from my plentiful onion harvest in the garden last summer. And you may yet see both of those manifestations of onion goodness here this winter. But I had a craving and a curiosity to satisfy first.
I love onion rings with that crispy salty outside and that soft sweet onion on the inside. They seemed to show up a lot at lunch during the summers when I was a kid; mom needed a quick side for my dad when he came rushing in at unpredictable times from working in the field. My dad loves fried food. Can you blame him?
Unfortunately I don’t have the physique to get away with eating fried foods in any great quantity. It stood to reason that my love of onion rings would be well served if I took some of those winter-stored onions and experimented with a healthier and homemade take on this fast food favorite.
Besides burning the first batch, I declare these a solid success! By putting a cookie sheet coated with a little oil in the preheating oven, you get the same crispy coating of fried onion rings without the saturated oily side effect. I can’t take credit for that technique though: I saw Jamie Oliver (on the “telly”) use it once to cook up roasted potatoes faster. Works like a charm, just be sure to let the cookie sheet get good and hot first, and then flip the onion rings once during baking to get the other side golden as well.
So, if you had a good dozen or so large juicy onions still in storage, what would you do with them? Or, perhaps more importantly, what would you like to see ME do with them?
Winter Harvest Bundt Cake
It’s hard to do justice to this recipe in words. You really have to taste it to know how wonderful a cake made with honey, pumpkin, parsnips, carrots, buckwheat flour, buttermilk and dark chocolate can truly be. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a cake that is so moist and flavorful, yet so packed with vitamins and relatively void of fat as far as cakes generally go.
This little brain child of mine was inspired by a recipe two winters ago that I conjured up for Parsnip Spiced Cupcakes. I had more parsnips in my crisper drawer this winter, and I remembered how big a hit those cupcakes were so I thought perhaps I should make another batch to bus us through this blustery winter. As I was sorting through my root vegetable stash, I grabbed a few sweet carrots that are still going strong and thought I might as well add those to the recipe. When I spied the frozen pumpkin puree in the freezer, I knew the wheels in my head were turning a different direction, though obviously a baked moist crumb was still on the menu, just now in rich dense {and healthy} bundt cake form.
Now, I’m not one to often promote a product other than the occasional cookbook or a local food item on this blog, but I do want to mention one that’s become a staple in my pantry (or rather fridge) and is a real lifesaver. It’s a powdered buttermilk that stays good for ages and you can mix up just the amount you need for a recipe rather than buying a carton at the store and feeling preasure to use up the rest of it. I found my red tub in the baking asile right next to the cake mixes and chocolate chips. This snowy winter, it has saved me more than one trip to the grocery store when the weather is antagonizing my kitchen escapades.
Should you be eyeballing the ingredient list below and raising an eyebrow, rest assured that you can use more conventional ingredients, such as white sugar and just all-purpose flour, instead of the honey, raw sugar, and buckwheat flour in this recipe. I opted to keep the ingredients as “wholesome” as possible to intensify the rustic wintery comfort dessert quality of this cake, a quality well-worth preserving if you can. I also learned a lot about buckwheat flour. I’d just used it before in pancakes and wasn’t sure how it would affect the texture of a cake. As it turns out, I love how tender it keeps the crumb and the nutty flavor is a lovely boon. Buckwheat lowers the gluten level in the cake so if you are trying to exclude gluten from your diet, I’m sure this cake could easily be made gluten-free. In fact, I’ve made it a few times now and pushed the amount of buckwheat flour up to one and a quarter cups with no apparent consequences (though D didn’t like it as much that time because it was too “earthy” for him).
Dusted with snowy confectioner’s sugar, Winter Harvest Bundt Cake is sure to bring a smile to everyone who has braved the cold to join you for a slice. Even weary shovelers will perk up after just one bite. And with all that vitamin C in there, one might even get away with calling this a flu and cold preventative medicine. Maybe. But, really, the flavor alone justifies that second slice.
Pickled Beets
Well, I don’ t know about where you are, but here it’s proving to be the perfect weekend to tuck in and get some things done around the house because, well, there’s really no other choice. In my humble opinion, a couple dozen inches of snow are a wonderful excuse to be a little lazy and perhaps a little bit productive too as your mood suits you throughout the day. Cups of tea and bowls of soup are also necessary amenities for snow days, and I’ve had plenty of both.
But while the rest of the city was running rabid to the store last night, desperately nabbing food to get them through the weekend of snow drifts, I was able to just walk down the steps to my basement and look over my shelves of preserved goodies that have been such a treat over this entire winter: pears, peaches, beans, jams, and pickled beets. That’s right…pickled beets. Ever had such a thing?
I suspect pickled beets are a culinary colloquialism, part of my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, but I could be wrong. All I really know is that I love them, though that wasn’t always the case. When I was a girl, my mom would make large batches of jars full of bright pink chunks of pickled beets, and it was my job to cart them down the narrow stairs to our root cellar to fill the cupboards there. I’m not sure if it was resentment for all the lugging or just the underdeveloped tastes of a kid, but pickled beets equaled “yuck!” in my young mind. Oddly enough, I don’t think we ever ate fresh beets, roasted or otherwise, when I was growing up.
Somewhere along the way, I got over my foolish hang-up about pickled beets and grew to appreciate them for what they are: a delicious sweet and savory treat that, when eaten in a snow storm, reminds me of the sunny autumn days when I plucked those very same beets out of the warm fragrant earth. In a few months, all this snow will have been melted away and it will be time to plant more beets again. They make a perfect spring crop to put in your garden as soon as you can get out there and start scratching out some rows. Be sure to buy plenty of seed so you’ll have enough for a second crop in the fall to make jars full of jewel-toned pickles of your own for next winter.
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