Apple Crisp

This dish is such a classic and, especially for those of us in New England who are swimming in apples from over-enthusiastic excursions to our local orchards, it is an excellent way to use up a solid batch of apples.  I only varied from the traditional recipe a little.  Instead of rolled oats, I used some toasted granola.  Also, we had a couple kiwis from our Boston Organics box and I thought it would be fun to add them to the recipe.  It came out good!

It's easiest to think of it in two steps: the apple layer and the "crisp" topping.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.


The apple layer.  You'll need:

• 4-5 large apples, peeled, cored and chopped (adds up to a little over 6 cups)
• 2 kiwis, peeled and chopped
  
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (just a little to bring out the flavor)
• 1/2 lemon, to sprinkle over the apple mix

 

Throw everything into a bowl and mix.  Layer into the bottom of well-buttered 8" baking pan.  Don't worry if it takes up most of the space, since the crisp won't take up too much room.

 The crisp layer.  You'll need:

• 2/3 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/2 c. granola (can also use rolled oats)
• 1/2 c. chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
• 5 tbsp cold butter, chopped up into small pieces. 
  

Throw the crisp ingredients into a food processor or blender and blend lightly.  Don't let it get too smooth (the cold butter should help prevent that from happening). 

Pour the crisp over the apple/kiwi mix and stick in the oven.

Let bake for about 40 minutes and done.

Salchipapas with Sweet Potato Fries

Salchipapas is a Peruvian dish (or Ecuadorian or Colombian dish, depending on, you know, who's talking).  It is a street food that consists of fried potatoes and sliced hot dogs.  As simple as it is, it's delicious!  Hard to meet a Peruvian who doesn't love salchipapas.

I had some leftover hot dogs to work with and my Boston Organics box had brought in 3 sweet potatoes, so I decided to experiment by trying to substitute the normal potato-fries with sweet-potato fries in the salchipapas.  I also decided to bake the sweet potatoes instead of frying them, to be a *little* bit healthier, and also to warm up the apartment since it started snowing today! (Wtf?!)

So the big chore here was really baking the sweet potato fries.  Then I fried up the hot dogs, whipped up a sauce (basically ketchup, mayo and a dollop of sriracha), and improvised salchipapas!  Oh yeah, you also need plenty of salt and seasoning.

Ingredients:

3 sweet potatoes, thinly sliced (approx a quarter inch by 3 inches; basically, keep it thin)
Olive oil
Salt, paprika, cayenne, oregano, salt
Hot dogs
Ketchup
Mayo

The Sweet Potato Fries (the "papas" part)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  After chopping the sweet potato up into thin slices, toss in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and spices (cayenne, paprika, oregano, salt, and whatever else you think would go well -- I like plenty of paprika).  Make sure to add plenty of oil and salt.

Place fries on a thin layer on a baking sheet, lined with aluminum foil.  Since the fries must be in one layer, you may need two baking sheets (or cook them in turn).  The less they touch each other, the crispier they'll get; but it's hard to get sweet potato fries particularly crispy.  (On the other hand, I overcooked one batch that definitely burned to a crisp, so beware if you dare to find the perfect crispy sweet potato fry.)

Put in oven and let bake for about 10 minutes.  Check in on it and turn the sweet potato fries.  The thinner you slice the potatoes, the quicker they will cook.  I like them very thin and had to be careful not to burn them.  If you like them thicker, try upping the temperature to 400-425 degrees.  But keep an eye on them and keep turning.  The total baking time should be closer to 20 minutes, but it may be less, depending on how thinly cut the fries are. 

When the fries are fully baked, lay them on a plate with a paper towel to soak up the grease and begin working on the hot dogs.  Transfer the fries to a large bowl.

The Hot Dogs (the "salchi" part)

Cut the hot dogs into thirds or quarters.  On each open end, slice in a cross about half an inch deep.  The edges from the cross will expand when the pieces heat up.  This "flare" is essential to bonafide salchipapas (but then again, sweet potato fries are antithetical to bonafide salchipapas, so do as you will).

Once sliced, fry up the hot dogs on low heat.  When fully fried, transfer the hot dogs to the bowl containing the sweet potato fries.  No salchipapas is complete without a sauce.  Even with the most sophisticated sauces, it's hard to beat out le ketchup.  If, in addition to le ketchup, you add a dollop of mayonnaise and sriracha, it's downright fancy.  Stir it all together to taste.  And done! (If you hate ketchup, you can do the same thing with le mustard, or, if you can get your hands on it, some real Peruvian Ají.) 

Dutch Baby Pancakes (a/k/a German Pancakes)

This is the perfect breakfast food for those of us who prefer salty over sweet. Apparently Dutch Babies are called "Dutch" because it was a popular dish among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

You can make them true "babies" by baking them in two separate six-inch cast-iron skillets or, if, like me, you only have one twelve-inch skillet, that works as well. The only difference will be the length of time it takes to bake (and also the way it looks when it falls -- in that regard, I almost prefer the bigger pancakes!).

I combined the recipes from Orangette and Ask Mr. Gold to come up with this. Since I'm not a big milk drinker, I only happen to have milk, cream, or half-and-half in my fridge if I've recently used it in a recipe. These recipes called for a half-cup of half-and-half or milk, but I only had heavy cream that I had used in my wild mushroom soup earlier in the week. Paranoid that using the cream alone would be too heavy, I watered it down a little, and it turned out OK!

Ingredients (per pancake - If you make two, double the quantities):

3 tablespoons butter (1 tbsp to butter the pan, 2 tbsps to melt and put in the batter)
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk/half-half/cream (which I watered down a little)
1/2 c. flour
1 tsp salt
1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Butter the skillet well with one tablespoon of butter. Buttering it is important so that the pancake won't stick. Melt the other two tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan.

Prepare the batter. Mix the eggs well. Add the milk/cream. Mix well. Slowly add the flour and salt, mixing until there are no lumps and the batter is smooth. Add the melted butter and mix well. Pour the batter in the now well-buttered skillet.

Bake it. Stick the skillet and batter in the oven. Let bake for fifteen minutes. Then lower the heat to 350 degrees and bake for ten more minutes (so it should bake for 25 minutes total). (Note: if you use two six-inch skillets, you'll only need to bake for the first 15 minutes at 450).


Then done!

Garnish. Sprinkle lemon juice over the entire pancake. The tanginess from the lemon was wonderful! That was enough for me, but it is traditional to then sprinkle with powdered sugar. Maple syrup also makes a lot of sense for this time of year.  We picked ours up from a sugar house in Vermont on a weekend getaway last week.  I put a little extra butter at the table to go on top of the pancake.  It went excellently with a side of hot apple cider that we bought in New Hampshire.

Kanelsnegle

I was looking for a recipe for a cinnamon pastry that was smaller, cuter, and a little lighter than your run-of-the-mill cinnamon buns. After finding nothing in English, Lars saved me by mentioning a Danish pastry called kanelsnegle ("cinnamon snails" in Danish). They are perfect and cute as hell! There are a ton of recipes floating around in Danish and a surprisingly large amount in English as well (I was just using the wrong search terms, I guess). I got this recipe from Beatie's Bentos, liking it most for its simplicity.

You'll need:

• 3-4 tablespoons of melted butter (for dough), 2-3 tablespoons of soft butter (for filling)
  
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 oz. dry yeast (= 14 g = 2 sachets) (If using fresh yeast cakes, use 35 grams)
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  

First you start the dough. It's a little bit tricky to get the melted butter and milk to the exact right temperature for the yeast (this is tricky with doughs in general). You want it to be warm, but not too hot or cold. So I add the butter immediately after being melted to the milk, and then immediately add the yeast. Then stir. As you're stirring, start dropping the flour in bit by bit.

Once you have your dough, sprinkle flour on the (clean) countertop for rolling. Roll it into a rectangle. The recipe in the link says to make it a little less than 1/2 inch thick, but I went for thinner, which may or may not have been a mistake. You'll get a higher yield, but the pastries will also be a little crunchier.

Put together the filling by mixing cinnamon and brown sugar with the 2-3 tablespoons of soft butter. (If you roll the dough out thinly, you might wanna go with 3 tablespoons of butter since you'll have more surface area to work with.) Spread the filling around the rectangle.

Now you roll. Hand roll the dough up along the short length of the rectangle so you have a long tube of kanelsnegle dough. Cut it up into a little over 1/2 inch slices and place each cross section on a baking pan. Try to keep some space in between the snegle (snails) for when they rise. Cover them with a cloth and let them rise for 15 minutes, in the meanwhile preheating the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake for 10-15 minutes (testing if ready by tasting, of course).

This goes beautifully with coffee. Especially when the kanelsnegle are still warm.

Salmon Asparagus Muffins

99 out of 100 times, I'll choose salty over sweet.  But I also think baking is great fun.  One answer to this conundrum is the savory muffin.  My favorite is the Salmon-Asparagus Muffin.  I first made it in Copenhagen in 2004, when I experienced my first (and only, actually) Scandinavian winter, and sought solace from the dreariness by baking neurotically and keeping our humble abode "hyggeligt."  These are great and slightly evil little muffins that really should last longer than they do in our household.  I found the recipe in Muffins, Scones and Breads, but, like most recipes I encounter, have modified it to match what we want and what we've got stocked up already.

Basically, you take a bunch of asparagus (usually one of the bunches from the supermarket is good enough, but I think the recipe could handle twice as much for the asparagus nut), heat it (I like steaming it), and chop it up.  Chop up the lox or whatever other cooked salmon you may have.  Make a muffin base: 3 c. flour, 4 tsp. baking powder, 2 eggs, 1 c. buttermilk, about a stick of melted butter (it's fine to use less).  Another simple muffin base recipe is available here (this one doesn't use buttermilk and remember to omit the sugar).

Then add the mustard, asparagus, and salmon to the mix.  You really don't need that much salmon to give it flavor.  If you are using cooked salmon (as opposed to lox), mix the salmon and mustard together before putting in the mix.  I also like adding some ground pepper into the mix (as well as to the topping).

Once you have put the muffins in the form, add your favorite savory topping or some combination thereof (I usually go with sprinkled cheese and/or some herbs and spices).  

Yummers.

Pear Galette

It has been raining all day and it is hard to deny that it's autumn now. I wanted to bake something today to make the house cozy (without resorting to the heater - then that's really admitting defeat). Our fruit and veggie box gave us four pears on Wednesday, so I decided a Pear Galette would do just the trick. After that was in the oven, Lars heated up some apple cider, sprucing it up with grated ginger and a shot of rum. Now we're ready for some Saturday afternoon indulgence. Check it out.




I adapted the recipe from one in "The Ultimate Cook Book" (UCB), but substituted the lemon with lime, since that's what we had.  It's basically what it looks like: a pie-like crust (with plenty of butter and shortening) and thin pear slices winding their way around the inside.  Sprinkle the pear with cinnamon, lime, and sugar (and some more butter), stick it in the oven and ta-da!  I probably could've made the remaining crust more beautisome, but am pretty proud of myself for getting through this one without too many hitches in the first place.



The house is, in fact, now cozy.