Apples and Pears, Oh My! Part 1

This past weekend, my mom visited me and brought about a half a water bucket of pears, and a little less of apples from our ancient trees back home.  Back in the 1970's, when my parents bought the small farm that I grew up on, there was already an antique apple tree and two pear trees.  One of the pear trees and the apple tree still exist.  There are two other apple trees of six planted by my parents.  

The pears are a Kieffer Pear (cooking pear), that, while tasty raw, have a grainy texture.  Apparently it grows well both in the south and in the north.  It is usually used for canning.  Our horses also love them.  The apple tree produces tart Macintosh like apples with a soft milky texture.  They make a great apple sauce.  Of course our trees go unsprayed, so everything is edible.  

My mom gathered the fruit about a week before visiting me (right before the great October snow storm of 2011).  Therefore, I had to prepare it for storage quickly before it spoiled, and in a manner that is not labor intensive, given that I do not have time for making mincemeat or pies.  

Unsprayed, our fruit looks "unattractive," but this means that it is 

healthier to eat. 

Taking a cue from a similar dilemma that a friend of mine had a few weeks ago, I made pear butter and apple butter.  This normally labor intensive task can be made simple by using a crock-pot.  

First up:

Pear Butter with Ginger and Clove

Cooking Pears

1/4-1/2 cup real lemon juice

Organic Apple Juice - no sugar added  (I used Apple and Eve brand)

fresh minced or grated ginger (or dry if you want) [I keep ginger that I grated in a jar submersed in sherry in the fridge.]

ground cloves

1. Peel, core, and chop up pears.  Use lemon juice to minimize oxidation while you work.
2. Put in crock-pot.  You should go no higher than within an inch of the top.  I used a 5.5 quart crock-pot.
3. Add enough apple juice to reach the top level of pears, but you do not need to cover. You can add some water if you do not have quite enough juice.
4. Add ginger and cloves to taste.  I used about three tablespoons of my ginger sherry mixture (not the measuring spoon tablespoon, but the real tablespoon) and 1/8 heaping tablespoon ground cloves.
5. Cook on low for up to 19 hours (assuming that you are sleeping or out of the house, otherwise you can use high).  Make sure to prop the lid slightly open to vent and let out moisture.  If you are doing a smaller batch, you can reduce time accordingly.  The whole mixture should reduce by about 1/3 before making your puree. 
6. Run through a food mill or blender, and return sauce to crock-pot.
7. Reduce by at least half or until you have a spreadable fruit sauce that is not runny.  You can use high or low depending on if you will be there to watch it.  (I ran it on high while I was up and low overnight.)
8. Store in airtight containers in freezer or fridge.  

Starting out, the crock-pot if filled to within one inch of the top, and

the lid is propped open by a wooden spoon.

Nineteen hours on low, the volume has dropped by a third, and 

the edges have browned.  (I do stir it occasionally, but here it has been

sitting all day while I was out.)

A couple of hours after passing through a food mill, the sauce has been reducing on high.

I turned it back to low before I went to bed.

The fruit butter is ready after reducing overnight on low.

Fruit butter after stirring.  Looking just right.

Creamy Delights - The Béchamel of the Non-Dairy "Dairy-Fix"

Sometimes you just want that creamy and sweet dairy experience.  Two ways I that I do this are fruit smoothies and a quick chocolate milk.  The basic ingredients are unsweetened almond milk and the only sugar substitute I will use - stevia.  Together, these are my Béchamel for a variety of non-dairy dairy drinks.  With this as your medium, you can make any quick and satisfying cold "dairy" drink that you want.

Part of every day is fresh fruit.  Between breakfast and lunch I like to make a fruit smoothie with almond milk and stevia.  The effect can be very much like a creamy milkshake. 

Dairy-Free Strawberry-Banana Fruit Smoothie (Serves 1-2 people)

1 small banana

4-5 ripe strawberries (more if they are small)

3-4 drops liquid stevia

Unsweetend Almond Milk (Plain or Vanilla)

1/2 tps. vanilla extract (if you use plain almond milk)

Put fruit in food processor or blender.  Cover with almond milk (use some extra in blender past covering fruit to make it like a milkshake).  Add stevia and vanilla.  Blend and serve.

Recipe Notes:

The banana helps give thickness to the shake.  You can substitute any fruit that you want.  Add some nutritional yeast for extra nutritional value.  Add a little ice for a more ice creamy expereince.  

One of the things that I really miss having more often is chocolate.  It usually has two of the things I must avoid - dairy and sugar.  Chocolate almond milk has sugar.  Adding chocolate powder directly to liquid can be difficult because it likes to clump if you are just stirring with a spoon.  So as my solution, I will whip up one of these every once in a while.

Quick and Easy Whipped Chocolate "Milk"

2-2 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk (plain or vanilla)

4 drops liquid stevia

up to a tablespoon of cocoa powder

Fill your glass about 3/4 of the way up.  The whipping will increase the volume.  Then add stevia and chocolate.  Whip the ingredients well with a frothing whip or hand blender.  For a hand blender, you may want to work in a larger, less-full glass.  There is no need for a standing blender unless you are preparing for a crowd. 

The end result is a creamy and frothy, evenly homogeneous suspension of chocolate in almond milk.  It is very a very light chocolate, but more would be too much stimulant anyway.  Play around with the proportions to come up with your perfect blend.  

And yes; it is delicious too.

Official First Post - Banana Muffins

I decided to start a blog about cooking; because everyone needs a hobby right? What better time to start one than a month before exams, because I just have so much free time; or not.  So for a quick description of why this blog I will just say for now that I like to cook and create recipes, so I will post recipes that I have either created or modified.  This will accomplish two things: first, I will be more likely to record my recipes for future use; and second, I will be better be able to share them with friends...and the world?  Eventually, I will do more than post a few recipes and actually develop the blog more, but I will just start sharing for now.

Due to some recent changes in diet, I have been forced to use my albeit amateur know-how-of-cooking to be extra creative in the kitchen, which absolutely is pushing my ego through the roof right now. Nothing is more satisfying that accomplishing a new trick in the kitchen.Ego, what ego?

I came up with the following recipe for Banana Muffins to use up two bananas.  Since I have gone off dairy and sugar, I had to come up with something that would both be sweet and fluffy.

Banana Muffins - Dairy-Free/Sugar-Free/Gluten-Free Alternate (untried)

Two (Long) Ripe Bananas mashed

4 eggs separated

1 tsp. baking soda

1.5 tsp. baking powder

1-1.5 inches of vanilla bean scraped*

a dash of salt 

1.5 cups Almond Milk

1/4 cup grape seed oil

5 drops stevia liquid (10 for a sweeter muffin)

1 cup Brown rice Flour

1-1.5 cups Spelt Flour**

1 cup of Quinoa soaked overnight (drained and rinsed)

Oven pre-heat: 350°F

1. Blend with mixer the mashed bananas with the 4 egg yolks, vanilla bean, salt, stevia, and leavening agents. Add almond milk and oil.
2. Add quinoa and flour, stir with mixer until just blended.
3. Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold in by hand (it does does not have to be perfectly blended; do this more like you would for pancakes).
4. Bake at 350°F. 25 minutes for mini’s - rotate if necessary.  1 hour+ for larger muffins. Cook until a knife (or toothpick) comes out with a few moist crumbs.  As long as you don't see uncooked batter on the knife, it is done.  

Makes: 12 large-medium and 36 mini’s; or you can do 24 medium muffin’s. 

Recipe Notes:

The first batch came out fluffy and lightly sweet.  I only used 5 drops of stevia, but you could use more.  It is a powerful sweetener, so I did not want to over do it.  I did them in papers, but due to their highly moist insides, you easily could go without paper liners.  If you do, you could perforate one side of the bottom after they come out of the oven to let steam escape.  You could also cut the almond milk by a half or quarter cup and leave everything else the same to make it less moist. 

You could probably leave out the Quinoa without needing a substitute, but it adds some texture, protein, and calcium.  Quinoa also adds its own flavor.

I suspect this recipe would also make great banana pancakes. Feel free to try this, and let me know how it works.

It would be hard to make this vegan, because the whipped whites are needed to give the muffins some structure.  Since I do not do a lot of vegan cooking, I do not know the solution to this.  

*For this first attempt I did not get to use the vanilla bean, because I could not find some at a price I was willing to pay.  I used 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract instead, which does contain sugar (but a negligible amount given the overall size of the recipe). 

**Since I just made the first batch two days ago, I have not developed an effective gluten-free version yet.  Spelt is low in gluten, and since I have been told that I can have a little gluten, I will be using spelt some of the time.  However, if you need to go gluten-free try using buckwheat flour or other heaver weight gluten-free flour or all brown rice flour.  Buckwheat has it’s own strong flavor, so you may want to use a more neutral flour.  Be sure to add a tablespoon of guar gum (derived from corn) or xanthan gum (derived from bacteria) for help with volume. 

Nearly six months later, 

I finally post a picture from when I made the muffins.