The Samantha Files

Pumpkin Bread Fever

Every year, when the leaves begin to crunch underfoot and there is a chill in the air, I get the fever.  I think about it during the day, at night, I dream about it... the perfect slice of pumpkin bread.  Infused with warm spices, moist, just sweet enough, and not too much butter.  I know, I know.  I love butter, I do.  But I like a somewhat healthy pumpkin bread, I want it to taste like a portable pumpkin pie that is ok to eat for breakfast.  Or with afternoon tea.  Or after dinner. 

The fever took hold last night, so between working out and eating dinner I rifled through a half dozen cookbooks looking for a recipe. 

My criteria:

• Uses as much pumpkin as possible, ideally a full can but at least one cup.
• No more than 1/2 a stick of butter (i.e., 1/4 c. fat)
• Very few extra ingredients to detract from the flavor of pumpkin and spices

I took ratios from one recipe, lowered the fat in another, added more pumpkin to another, stirred up the batter and threw in a handful of chocolate chips for good measure.  An hour later, pumpkin bread nirvana.  Packed with pumpkin, a trio of spices, and a bit of chocolate.  Tender and moist, the Great Pumpkin would be proud.

Before I give you the recipe, I do have to admit something.  Pshew, here goes.  I used sweet potato puree.  Here I am, waxing nostalgic about pumpkin bread and I used a tuberous root instead of the beloved pumpkin.  Scandal!  But I had 3 cans of sweet potato puree in the pantry, so I threw caution to the wind.

I give you permission to use whatever puree you want to... pumpkin, butternut, sweet potato, delicata, go crazy.  I'll still be calling this pumpkin bread.  Yes, I'm a baking rebel. 

Pumpkin Fever Bread

• 1 c. all purpose flour
• 1/2 c. spelt flour
• 1/2 t. kosher salt
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1/4 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. allspice
• 1/4 t. nutmeg, freshly grated if you can
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 1/4 c. pumpkin puree
• 1/2 stick butter (1/4 c.), melted and cooled
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 c. water
• 1/2 c. chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli 60% cacao bittersweet chips)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a standard 9"x5" loaf pan.  Better yet, use this tea loaf pan from King Arthur Flour.  I love this pan, and you will too... I promise.

In a bowl, whisk together both flours, salt, baking soda, and spices.

In a larger bowl, whisk together the sugar, pumpkin puree, melted butter, eggs, and water. 

Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients and mix until just combined.  A rubber spatula is best here.  Stir in your chocolate chips.  Pour into your prepared loaf pan, spreading the batter evenly in the pan.

Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean.  Remove from the oven, cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out the loaf onto a wire rack and cool completely.

A few notes:

• Feel free to use 1 1/2 c. all purpose flour.  The little bit of spelt flour is undetectable in the bread, and next time I might try 1 c. spelt flour and 1/2 c. all purpose flour.  Whole grain pastry flour would also be good here.
• Substitute grapeseed or a mild olive oil for the melted butter.
• Not feeling like chocolate chips?  Leave them out.  You could add in 1/2 c. toasted walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts.  I think 1/4 c. toasted nuts and 1/4 c. chopped figs or dates would also be delicious.

Tomato sauce that will make you swoon! I swear!

Last night, Dave and I got home from work and I was beat.  We had some tomatillo salsa we made the night before in the fridge, and all the ingredients for a Mexican-inspired dinner.  But I wanted comfort food, so I turned to Marcella Hazan by way of Orangette.  Molly had made a nice, simple tomato sauce a few weeks back, and I was itching to give it a try.

I modified the recipe a bit, based on a few people who had commented on her post (and based on what I had in the cupboards).  I had a 14.5 oz. can of Muir Glen whole peeled tomatoes that I chopped up in the can with scissors.  And I had a 14.5 oz. can of Muir Glen fire-roasted crushed tomatoes.  I combined both cans of tomatoes in a pot, added 4 T. butter, a good pinch of salt, half of a big onion, and a whole peeled carrot.  Simmered for 45 minutes as per the original recipe, fished out the onion and carrot, and tossed with 12 oz. bucatini and a little freshly grated parmesan.  Enough for dinner last night and lunch today.

Ok, I know you're wondering how good could this sauce possibly be?  No garlic, no herbs, butter instead of olive oil?  People, this sauce means business.  Just these few ingredients combine to make a spectacular sauce, creamy, rich, sweet from the onions and the tomatoes.  I really liked the fire roasted tomatoes in this sauce, they added a hint of smoke that doesn't overwhelm. 

While the sauce was cooking, I sauteed some mushrooms in a little butter/olive oil and tossed in some thawed frozen broccoli at the end.  I also had a few eggplants in the fridge, so I sliced them into little wedges and roasted them at 450 degrees until tender.  I chopped it up and added it to the mushrooms and broccoli, and finished with lemon. 

I had also made some apple/pear sauce the night before, which I turned into individual crisps with my handy-dandy bag of crisp topping I had in the freezer.  Dinner and dessert done in a flash, with plenty of time to watch 2 episodes of House (I'm taping the current season, but we're watching Season 3 on dvd).   

So give butter and tomatoes a chance and make this sauce, it is deelicious! 

Farmer's Market Wednesday

Purchased today (all organic except for the berries and the plums):

• 4 small zucchini and 4 small summer squash
• 2 green peppers
• 3 japanese eggplant and 2 small italian eggplant
• 1 qt. of new potatoes (3 kinds, will get names next week)
• 1 bunch rainbow swiss chard
• 1/2 pint orange cherry tomatoes
• 1 bag mixed salad greens (they make their own mix)
• 1 small container sesame noodles with broccoli, swiss chard and tofu (treat for a co-worker, who has already eaten it and declared it delicious!)
• 2 pints blueberries
• 1/2 pint raspberries
• 1 pint small red plums

Dinner plans:  Thai Red Curry with tofu, eggplant, and zucchini.  Brown basmati rice in the rice cooker.  Watermelon for dessert.

Other plans:  New potatoes with feta and a side of sauteed swiss chard.  Roasted eggplant salad (diced eggplant, tossed with olive oil, s&P and roasted in a hot oven, maybe mized with diced roasted peppers, capers, lemon juice and zest).  Buckwheat Bundt Cake with Blueberries.  Stuffed zucchini with a fresh tomato and chickpea salad on the side.

Farmer's Market Wednesday

Purchased today (all organic except for the bread):

• 2 bunches rainbow swiss chard
• 1 bunch dinosaur kale
• 1 bunch small purple onions
• 1/2 pint red cherry tomatoes
• 1 bag arugula
• 4 small zucchini and 4 small yellow squash
• A spinach and feta pie with a whole wheat crust (already eaten for lunch)
• 1 pint of garlic scape magic (a puree of garlic scapes, organic olive oil, salt and pepper)
• 1 loaf of multigrain bread

I also had a taste of some great herbal tea that my friend Nicole at Riverbank Farms made... Dave called it serious hippie tea.  She dries her own herbs, and this tea had peppermint, chamomile, mugwort, red clover, lavender, and some other herbs.  She's going to bring me a jar of dried herbs next week, in trade for some brownies.

IMBB #17 - TasteTea - Iced Tea Gelatin

This month's edition of Is My Blog Burning? is all about tea!  Now, I love tea.  I started drinking tea at an early age, surely because my dad would drink a mug of Red Rose tea every morning.  I loved to take the teabag out of our cool little octagonal container, I loved filling up the container from a new box, and I especially loved to find the little ceramic animals that used to come in the big box of Red Rose.

When I was younger, we would go on vacation to Toronto, Canada, and we would stay at the Guild Inn (sadly closed now).  I must have been 10 when we started going there.  My family would have afternoon tea in their restaurant, and I would drink so much tea during our week trip that I would go through withdrawal once we got home.

Then in college, I took my first trip to London.  Ah, now the British can make a good cup of tea.  My first fancy high tea (silver teapots, endless sandwiches, little pastries) was at Harrods, and boy did I have alot of sugar and caffeine that day!  Dave and I have been to London many times since, and still like to stop by Harrods for a fancy high tea.  But tea is so much a part of the culture there, I just love it.  I love the ritual of tea, especially loose leaf tea.  Sometimes you'll use a teaball, sometimes you get a little seive that you use when pouring tea from a teapot to your cup to catch the leaves.

My favorite tea spot stateside... Tealuxe of course.  Tealuxe is in Harvard Square, and there is nothing I like more than sitting with Dave at one of the counter seats overlooking Origins and the Coop, people watching and enjoying an iced tea or a hot tea.  (Boy, thank goodness we're going to Boston this weekend, I've made myself so nostalgic!).  I'll take some pictures of Tealuxe and post them once we get back home, you'll see why I like it so much.

Tea drinkers are a special breed.  Coffee gets you wired more quickly, usually you're grabbing a cup to keep you awake, a quick energy burst, breakfast from your local doughnut place (with a doughnut for dunking).  Tea is for enjoying with friends, for winding down at the end of the day.  Tea matches well with food, whether the tea is hot or iced.  Tea has been enjoyed for many years by so many different cultures, from tea ceremonies in Japan to mint tea at the end of a Moroccan meal.  Brewing loose tea in a clear mug or pot is a beautiful sight, the tea leaves blooming before your eyes.   

I'm a black tea drinker myself, with milk and sugar please.  I love to buy herbal teas as well, and tend to enjoy them more iced.  And I am starting to drink more green and white tea, no milk in those!  When I saw this edition of IMBB, how could I resist?  Would I make ganache for truffles and infuse it with chai tea?  Would I make some tea-smoked tofu?  Would I make a pavlova with earl grey whipped cream and berries?  So many options!

I happened to be looking at Chika's site, She Who Eats, and saw that she had made some tea gelatin.  Now, that's a perfect idea!  It's hot out, so I wouldn't need to bake.  And it's a healthy treat (keeps me from taste-testing chai truffles after getting home from the gym... not a terrible thing, mind you, but defeats the workout a bit).  I had received some delicious tea from Adagio, and this little tin of Yunnan Jig was just waiting to be used.  So I took out some unsweetened gelatin, and worked up a recipe.  The amounts can easily be multiplied, though the amount of tea could vary.  Basically, the guidelines are 1t. tea/cup.  Use more or less tea, and sugar, to taste.

Thanks to Dave, my highly skilled (and much loved) photographer.

And thanks to Clement over at A La Cuisine for hosting this month's IMBB event.

Dinner in a flash (or, we just got home from the gym and we're HUNGRY)

Tuesday night, after Dave and I got home from the gym (since I had been sick, it had been a few weeks... it was nice to get back into the swing of things), we wanted to make a really quick dinner.  Doesn't it look good? 

I remembered a post from Josh's site, and thought a no-cook sauce would be perfect tonight.  I had no cherry tomatoes, but I always have canned tomatoes (I have a stockpile at the moment, because I always buy them when we go to the store so we don't run out... yes, I am a canned tomato addict... let's move on, ok?).

I combined 2 cans of diced tomatoes with the juice in a large bowl, and added lemon oil (no lemons in the house, but lemon oil is perfect in a pinch as a substitute for zest), a little garlic oil, salt, pepper, Solar Power seasoning, thawed (frozen) basil cubes from trader joes, green beans cut into small pieces (I used frozen french green beans, thawed under running water then snipped up), fresh mozzarella diced small, and a can of rinsed and drained chickpeas.

We cooked up a pound of penne, drained and tossed together with the tomato mixture.  Top with a little grated parmesan and enjoy!

Posted while listening to The Best of Paolo Conte

Cake thoughts - Cupcakes and my favorite easy cake recipe

Via not martha's site... don't these cupcakes sound scrumptious?!?

And I'm not a huge fan of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade show, but  these Boston Creme cupcakes do sound pretty good.  I'd probably bake my standard cake-pan cake recipe, and use dark chocolate.

Too long, let me sum up

Hey boys and girls,

How was your weekend?  Mine was grand!  We'll do a quick sum-up, and I will elaborate later.

Friday - Wine tasting in Bkln with J & M and lots of other folks.  Had a great time, stayed in their guest room (thank goodness, we were in no shape to drive home at 2:30!).

Saturday - Brunch in Bkln at Robin du Bois.  Poached eggs with roasted potatoes, ratatouille, salad, and lots of fresh baguettes.  Walked around with J, then hung out in their backyard drinking cava and mango juice.  Joked about the 'bogart' from the evening before.  Picked a restaurant for next weekend's pre-graduation dinner (J is graduating from law school - yay for him!!!).  Want to know where we're going?

Rice for Everybody!

I took out three (count em, three!) rice-related cookbooks from the library this past weekend... one of which is all about using a rice cooker.  The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook is a must for anyone with a rice cooker.  We have a regular on-off-keep warm rice cooker, but now I'd like to get a fuzzy logic rice cooker that has settings for regular rice, brown rice, porridge, even a quick cook cycle.  Last night I made a brown rice pilaf with parmesan, it was delish!  Here's my adaptation of the parmesan rice recipe from the cookbook:

The tomato to end all tomatoes

I first found the Gentleman Gourmand via The Amateur Gourmet, and here he talks about a perfect Umbrian tomato. I just love the picture of the tomato.

Also, his 'recipe' for chicken schnitzel-izzle sounds delish!