These bars are one of our new favorite recipes from the vegan cookbook. They're yummy warm on a weekend morning or cold that afternoon... if they make it that long.

I modified this recipe because the figs I can buy are nice and soft and moist, not hard little rocks. If all you can find are hard little rocks, then you should simmer them for 20 minutes or so in half a cup of water and a tablespoon of sugar... until they get soft and puree-able.

Raspberry Fig Breakfast Bars
(from The Garden of Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, p. 47)

3/4 cup dried figs, cut in half [I don't cut them and they're just fine]
[If doing the "simmering" step, 1/2 cup water and 1 T. sugar]

1 c. flour [I use white whole wheat flour... good stuff!]
2 c. rolled oat flakes
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup oil [the recipe says olive oil, I find that has too strong a flavor, so I use canola oil]
2 T. water
1/2 cup raspberry jam

[If simmering the figs, do that first.]
Preheat oven to 350°.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, rolled oats, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, oil, and 2 T. water, and stir together until well mixed. In a blender or food processor, blend the fig mixture and jam until smooth. [I just add the figs right from the package, and sometimes I add a tablespoon or so of hot water from the tap to help loosen things up.] Press half the crust mixture onto the bottom of a lightly oiled 8x8 baking pan. Layer the fig mixture over top, spreading it out with the back of a large spoon. Press the remaining crust mixture over top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned. Set aside to cool. Makes 6-12 bars [it always makes exactly 9 bars for me].

400) For my four hundredth post, I thought I would return to my roots and post a recipe.

I just copied this from my daily recipe e-zine (World Wide Recipes.com), but I modified it just a touch, as always...


( Read more... )

300) Both my dad and I have recently bought fennel.

Today's WWRecipes e-zine (the free, stipped-down variety) has the following excerpt about fennel. This is from Molly O'Neill, "A Well-Seasoned Appetite."

Like Persephone, fennel traffics between the darkness and the light. The pale green bulbous vegetable with its fibrous stalks and feathery fronds bespeaks the sun, as does its sweet, faintly herbaceous anise flavor when raw.  When fennel is cooked, its flavor becomes more elusive yet somehow more intensely licorice, and hence tastes dark and mysterious....  As with many mysteries, one wants just enough fennel to be titillated and perhaps, thereby, emboldened to approach other unknowns.  Fennel is primarily grown in Italy, southern France, and California.  When it appears in the early fall, fennel seems to extend summer; abiding through the winter months it seems to promise spring. Those who acquire a taste for fennel seem to be those willing to entertain simultaneous opposites, particularly little patches of sun in the season of the bleak.

204) Just cruised by James Lilek's page, and found that he has updated the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

If you haven't been, go. My favorite is "10 PM Cookery"-- although how can I pick just one!

181) I can't remember if I've already posted this, and I'm too tired to go back and check... so here it is (again?).

Blueberry Pound Cake

(and it's even low-fat!)

 

• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 3 large eggs
• 1 large egg white
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• 2 cups blueberries (frozen is best)
• 2 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 8-ounce carton lemon yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat together the sugar, butter, and cream cheese until well-blended. Add the eggs and the egg white one at a time, beating well after each.

In a small bowl, toss the 2 Tablespoons of flour with the blueberries until berries are coated. In another bowl, combine the 2 and 1/2 cups of flour, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the egg mixture; beat well. Then add half the carton of lemon yogurt and beat well again. Add the next third of the flour; beat. Then the rest of the lemon yogurt; beat. Finally, the last third of the flour (and beat again!).

Fold in the blueberries and the vanilla extract by hand (so you don't crush the blueberries). Pour into a 10-inch tube pan or Bundt pan sprayed with PAM. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for about 50 minutes, or until it passes the toothpick test.

--This is really delicious, and the substitution of yogurt for more butter means it's (relatively) good for you! (For pound cake, anyway.)

163) And the final (for now) installment of the cookie series, just for Lyssa...

6: Spritz

These are traditional for Christmas, and they are so much fun to make, and lots of fun to eat, too! You can even give them away in decorative tins, because they're so pretty to look at.

But be warned. You will need a cookie gun. No, a cookie gun is not what we use to put injured cookies out of their misery. And no, it is not a device to fire cookie dough into the sky for shooting practice.

It is a long metal barrel with a plunger at one end and a pattern at the other. You put dough in, and when you press the plunger, the cookie gun will "spooch" out an interesting pattern of cookie dough onto the baking sheet. It's ingenious-- it's nifty-- it's perfect for kids-- it's Swedish. (I think. All pastry innovations are from the Swedish.)

Be that as it may. If you don't have a cookie gun and would like one, there are four different brands and models for sale here, and I'm sure there are more elsewhere.

Right! Onward to the recipe!

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 egg 
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 and 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 Tablespoon grated lemon peel (optional)

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium-sized bowl. In a large bowl, beat together the shortening and the sugar. Beat in the egg. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the vanilla extract and the lemon peel, if desired. Chill dough about half an hour.

Choose which patterns you're going to use for the cookie gun. It's boring to use only one. I like to choose the 6 prettiest and just use those. Put one pattern into the cookie gun, and then the dough (if that's the way yours is made). Obviously, check the directions.

Use the cookie gun to "spooch" out a cookie onto an ungreased baking sheet. (Don't worry about it sticking-- it will, a little bit, and you want it to, so it doesn't lose all its shape. And the butter and margarine in the dough will keep it from adhering to the sheet like epoxy cement.)

Change patterns at will. Fill up cookie sheets with spooched cookies. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit about 12 minutes, until just getting brown around the edges. Cool on wire racks. Makes 5 dozen tiny spritz cookies.

Simple divine fresh from the oven, with milk.

160) More cookies! Get them while they're hot!

3: Grannie Smith's Sugar Cookies 

• 1/2 cup butter 
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg 
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups plus 2 Tablespoons flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Mix together all ingredients. Roll into a ball and refrigerate for at least one hour. Roll into small balls, place on cookie sheets. Flatten with the bottom of a glass that has been dipped in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 8 to 10 minutes, until beginning to brown at the edges. Makes about 3 and a half dozen.

158) OK, you asked for cookies, Lyssa...

I'm going to publish two cookie recipes a day for three days... hopefully that will give everyone at least one type that he or she likes. No, don't thank me! Really! It's all part of being me, She Who Scatters Recipes Abroad Like Planting Seeds! Or something like that.

So, here are the first two recipes. They're in alphabetical order for those who care.

1: Anise Cookies

This recipe is started the night before and finished the next day. The recipe is a traditional one from Eastern Europe. Making these makes the house smell very strongly of anise-- a pungent licorice smell. If that appeals to you, then read on...

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon oil of anise (Oil of anise can be found at the pharmacy counter of the grocery store. You're looking for OIL of anise, not extract of anise or anything-else of anise. No substitutions. Note: This will probably be the only thing you ever need oil of anise for. )
• 1 and one half cups flour

Beat eggs and sugar together in Cuisinart for a long time, until completely blended together and pale yellow in color. (The original recipe says to beat for 30 minutes, but I believe that's more appropriate if you're beating it by hand.) Then add the anise oil and the flour; beat to incorporate.

Drop by spoonsful onto cookie sheets sprayed with PAM. Let stand at room temperature overnight to firm up. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 12 to 15 minutes. The cookies will stay light in color. Cool slightly on the sheets, then transfer to wire racks to finish cooling. Makes about four dozen.

156) My father sent me a cool book about ancient Roman religion.

This takes me back to my student days, studying Latin and Greek... walking to Old Main (the building that housed the Classics Department) through a foot of snow, early on a winter morning, before the sun was up... Freshman year, I had Beginning Greek at 7:45 AM, followed an hour later by Intermediate Latin. The next year, the school changed the schedule so the earliest class was at 8 AM. Still plenty early, especially for a college student whose social life occurred between 10 PM and 2 AM.

Anyway, this book is neat. According to it, this is the time of year-- around the 9th full moon of the year-- to celebrate the Eleusinian Mysteries. What they were, we're not really sure. Initiates were under pain of death not to reveal what went on. But here's what we do know:

The Eleusinian Mysteries were focused around the myth of Ceres and her daughter Persephone. They were open to anyone who spoke Greek and had not committed murder. They began in the last half of September and lasted around 10 days. People from all over the Mediterranean made the pilgrimage to Athens to participate in these rites.

From here on, I'm quoting directly from the book Classical Living by Dr. Frances Bernstein. Anything in brackets, [so], is my interpolation.

"Day 1: Young men selected for their physical dexterity and athleticism left Athens for the town of Eleusis to escort the sacred objects back to Athens on the following day.

"Day 3: Thousands of men and women gathered in the grand Agora [Marketplace] of Athens to declare themselves participants and hear the high priest state the rules.

"Day 4: The initiates marched to the sea to purify themselves in the briny water. Each initiate also washed a piglet that he or she would sacrifice later that day. [Catherine says: Must have been a loooooot of piglets back then! Actually, I bet only rich people could afford a piglet. Maybe poor people had to make due with a loaf of bread shaped like a pig.]

"Day 5: A sacrifice was offered to the two goddesses.

"Day 7: The initiates walked along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, following behind the sacred objects. As they walked, they swung branches of myrtle tied with wool in rhythm to a beat and shouted the name 'Iakchos.' They carried torches, as the goddess Ceres did in her search. A ritual bath in the river ended the day's journey.

     "The initiates were welcomes into Eleusis and, at the sight of the first star, broke their two-day fast just as the goddess [Persephone] had done. Special round pottery dishes and tiny cups of grain, peas, and beans were displayed for all to see. That night, the women apparently danced suggestively and sang obscene songs, although celibacy was mandatory.

"Day 8: The final phase of initiation occurred in a building built solely for this purpose. The Telesterion was a large flat-roofed, windowless square hall capable of holding thousands of people on rows of seats lining the sides. In the center was the Anaktoron, a sacred stone construction, closed to view, containing the throne of the high priest. This must have been a very dark and mysterious place. The initiates drank the sacred drink, kykeon, and attended the mystery rites.

"Day 9: There was dancing, feasting, and singing after the rites were completed. As a closure ceremony, a libation was made with all participants facing the east, looking to the sky, and shouting "Rain," then turning to the west, facing down at the earth, and shouting "Conceive!" (or "Hye," then "Kye," in Greek). The clothes the initiates wore were later used as swaddling clothes for newborn infants."

A tangent on Kykeon

What is this "kykeon" drink, I hear you ask? Well, read on and learn!

Kykeon was a drink of barley, water, and herbs that some suggest contained traces of barley mold (ergot), a substance similar to LSD. Homer writes of its preparation in the Iliad, Book 2, lines 638 to 641:

"Fair-haired Hecamede made kykeon for them... First she moved a table up to them, a fine polished table with a dark gleaming stand: on it she placed a bronze disk with an onion in it as a relish to the drink, and also yellow honey. Next came the cup of holy barley meal. Thus, in a cup, the lovely woman made a kykeon for them with Pramnian wine: she grated goat's cheese into it with a bronze grater, and sprinkled barley on it, and when she had prepared the kykeon, she invited them to drink."

But leukothea, I hear you cry, that's not very informative! Why don't you tell us how we can make kykeon in our own homes? Well, I'm glad you asked.

This is a modern version, adapted from a recipe found in Cato's treatise on how to live in the country, De Agricultura, 85.)

• 2/3 cup semolina
• 16 ounces ricotta cheese
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup beaten egg

Place the semolina in a medium-sized pan, cover with water, and soak for fifteen minutes. Drain the water from the semolina and add the ricotta cheese, honey, and beaten egg. Bring slowly to a very low boil and allow to simmer for a few minutes. Cool before serving.

There! Aren't you glad you asked?