The School of Essential Ingredients

Our library was offering patrons a bag of books for $5 a few weeks ago in an effort to clear space in their used book section. I didn’t really have empty space on my own shelves, but I decided that it would be a good thing to “support” the local establishment. There was only one book I really wanted (Heaven, by Joni Eareckson Tada), but I filled the rest of my plastic bag with an assortment of children’s books, a book about the Holy Land, cookie cookbooks, and a novel.

It is hard for me to find a novel that I can recommend to my friends and family. The writing may be really good, but almost always the author thinks they have to include descriptions of racy, intimate experiences. I’d rather not have a window into someone else’s honeymoon suite, thank you. So, when I say that I liked this book, be forewarned that there may be a paragraph or a page here and there to skip over.

The novel in my $5 bag of books is called The School of Essential Ingredients. The work of fiction brings the reader to a Monday night cooking class. There we meet the restaurant owner/chef teacher and her students. We learn the background story to each individual. We also see how they learn from each other about both food and about living life over several weeks in the class.

I enjoyed the narration which used adjectives to awake meaning in sight, sound, and touch as well as the expected sensory descriptors of aroma and flavor. The story line(s) held my attention. Plus, the hints of recipes were inspiring.

For one of the classes, the teacher begins by saying that they will prepare a Thanksgiving meal. Some of the students inwardly groan at the thought of a spread that is known more for abundant quantity than quality. However, the teacher goes on to explain that their meal will have a twist. They will keep many of the traditional ingredients but prepare them in different ways.

Pumpkin ravioli is the first dish listed on the menu. Until I read the rest of the ingredients, I wasn’t so sure that squash pasta was a good idea. The tender pillows of pasta were served with “butter releasing whispers of shallots and hazelnuts”.

After I finished reading the novel, the idea of freshly prepared ravioli stayed with me. Sweet orange squash puree, slightly spiced butternut squash soup, roasted acorn squash: all have pleased me in the past (and present).

This week, I invited a friend from church to join me in the experiment. We would make a fresh pasta with an orange-colored filling, but our ravioli would have our own twist to it: gluten-free flour for the pasta, butternut squash instead of pumpkin, and toasted walnuts instead of hazelnuts.

It was pleasant to spend time together and to share the work.

We doubled the recipe for the filling, and we made two batches of pasta dough. The first was made with King Arthur one-for-one gluten-free flour, egg yolks, olive oil, and almond milk. The second batch was a mixture of Pamela’s gluten-free flour, and whole eggs.

The KA mixture was much drier, probably because we did not include the egg whites (look forward to coconut macaroons in the near future!). The second batch had more flavor, because the Pamela’s flour mixture had ground nuts in addition to the rice and tapioca flours in the KA flour.

The pasta cracked with our first attempts, but Bonnie got a better handle on it as she practiced.

The result wasn’t spectacular, but the flavor combinations were satisfying. We only boiled a few to test, and then we froze the rest to share with others later.

Filling:

3 10-oz bags of frozen organic butternut squash cubes (Aldi)

4 shallots

6 T olive oil

3 cloves garlic (We used minced from a jar.)

salt, pepper, sage, thyme, crushed red pepper (all to-taste)

You toss those together and spread them on baking sheets. Roast them for 30 minutes. Remove the trays from the oven, allow the shallots to cool before removing the skins and cutting them into smaller pieces. Place the squash and shallots in a large-deep bowl.

Add: 4 Tablespoons mascarpone and 4 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheeses to the squash and shallots. Puree until smooth. We used an immersion blender, because I don’t have a large food processor.

Pasta:

2 cups King Arthur gluten-free flour

6 large egg yolks

2 teaspoons olive oil

1/2 cup almond milk, or enough to bring the mixture together into a ball

OR

2 cups Pamela’s gluten-free flour

4 large eggs

Instructions for pasta:

On a clean counter, make a mountain with the flour. Hollow out the center so that it looks like an empty volcano. Place the eggs in that hollow. Use a fork to slowly combine the flour and egg. Drizzle in the olive oil. Add milk if your dough is still crumbly. Set the fork aside and use your hands to form the mixture into a ball. Knead the dough for ten minutes, either by hand or in a heavy-duty mixer. Once the dough is smooth and pliable, cover it with plastic wrap. Let the ball of dough rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Once the dough has rested, divide it into 4 even pieces. Roll the dough into a 1/16-inch rectangle. You may need some extra flour to keep it from sticking to the clean counter. Drop about a teaspoon of the squash puree onto your sheet of pasta. Repeat down the length of the rectangle, leaving plenty of space to seal and cut individual pillows of pasta. Brush the dough with water before folding one side over the mounds of filling. Use your fingers to firmly press around the filling. Use a knife to cut the pasta either into squares or circles. Then finish sealing each piece with the tines of a fork. Be careful not to pierce the filling, or it will leak during the boiling step.

At this point, you can either cook them in boiling water for 10 minutes, or you can freeze them for later.

To freeze, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or plastic wrap. Place the raviolis in a single layer on the tray. Put the tray into the freezer for at least 30 minutes. When they are firm and no longer sticky, you may transfer them to a plastic bag or other container.

While you are boiling the ravioli, melt butter in a small pan or small pot. Watch as it begins to foam. You want the butter to brown but not burn. This should take four to six minutes depending on how much butter you are melting. Season to taste with more sage, salt, and pepper.

Serve the ravioli with the browned butter, toasted chopped walnuts, and grated Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Sharing the Oven

Summer is coming, and with it comes the cost of air conditioning. One should at least think twice before turning on the oven and heating up the kitchen. Thankfully, this week, the temperatures are still in the 50 to 60-degree range. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to coordinate several bakes.

Before lunchtime, I grated the last lonely zucchini that was in the bottom drawer of my refrigerator. I used it to experiment with a bag of coconut flour blend that I bought on sale. At first, I wasn’t sure that the recipe’s amounts were right, because the batter was so dry. The maple syrup and the egg whites slackened the crumbly mixture and brought it together into something manageable. It did take more than 12 minutes for the muffins to bake through, though.

We usually eat at 11 a.m., but occasionally push lunchtime forward thirty minutes to an hour. Today was one of those days. The muffin tin went into the oven at 10:50 a.m. and our lunch ingredients would need a higher oven temperature.

Potatoes were starting to wrinkle, so they were definitely on the menu. Without their skins, they weren’t so ugly–pretty and firm enough to cut into French fries. They soaked in a salty bath while I seasoned some frozen broccoli. The green vegetable and potatoes could roast together; they were spread on separate baking sheets to make sure that they got crisp rather than steaming in a crowd.

When the ten-minute timer buzzed for the muffins, the batter had spread a little bit, but the top was still pale. Three minutes later, the tops were hinting at brown and the shapes were nicely rounded. So, I pulled them out. When I touched one, it was obviously not ready, though, so back in they went. Maybe coconut flour takes longer than spelt flour (what was called for in the recipe). I didn’t record exactly how many minutes longer it took, but probably a total of twenty?

As soon as the muffins came out, I cranked the oven temperature from 350 up to 450 and impatiently waited for it to preheat. It would be worth the wait to have crispy fries that were cooked through.

The fries and broccoli roasted for ten minutes before I flipped them and put them back in for another ten minutes. At this point, Joel needed to turn a tall fan on to stop the smoke alarm’s loud warnings. Three hot dogs were added to the broccoli pan to heat through.

Spicy ketchup (think curry) was a nice change from straight sugary tomato ketchup. We were satisfied without buns for the hot dogs.

Bonus with the cooling-yet-still-hot oven is that you can set your recently-washed pans inside for them to quickly dry.

Zucchini & Apple Muffins

2 large eggs, separated

1/2 c canola oil

2 c cup-for-cup coconut flour blend

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1 medium zucchini, grated

1/4 c dried apples, Craisins, raisins (rehydrated)

1/2 c maple syrup

Pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350* F. Line a muffin tin with colorful papers. You may need to find 2 extra cups: I had enough batter for 14 muffins.

Beat the egg yoks and canola oil together until smooth and creamy: about four minutes. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add this to the egg-oil mixture. It will seem dry and crumbly. Add the maple syrup, zucchini, and fruit mix. In a clean, narrow bowl beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites a spoonful at a time into the crumbly mixture. This should slacken the ingredients up into a manageable batter.

Fill each muffin slot no more than 2/3 full. My cookie scoop worked well: two scoops per muffin. Slide the tin into your pre-heated oven. Set the timer for 10 minutes. When it rings turn the light on to see how things are going. Mine weren’t ready until closer to 20 minutes of baking had passed.

Remove from the oven. Cool or enjoy warm. The similar recipe in Love Bake Nourish suggested a cream cheese frosting, but I found that mine were sweet enough on their own.

Humidity

Outside may be damp with freshly fallen snow, but the air inside our apartment is dry.

Hair stands on end with the static.

To add moisture we boil water on the stove top along with a small batch of pork tamales.

This batch is prepared following a recipe from the website, My Colombian Recipes.