Thursday, July 3, 2008

This week's CSA - July 3, 2008

This week's CSA included bread from the Breadery, a dozen eggs, and the following:


Cucumbers, lettuce, cherries, cabbage, broccoli, basil, potatoes.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it, especially the potatoes. Currently, I have too many potatoes on hand, but no high starch ones so gnocchi is out.

Chocolate Chewies

This is a flourless chocolate cookie, which is gorgeously crackly, chewy, and deeply chocolatey. Great for those who can't have flour for some reason. It's low fat, but does anyone really care?? It's still full of sugar and is nutritionally somewhat devoid. Except for the fact that chocolate has flavnoids and other beneficial compounds, and eating chocolate makes one happy. Happy is good.


Chocolate Chewies
Ingredients:
32 ounces powdered sugar
8 oz cocoa powder. I prefer non-dutch processed for this, since I think the flavor is more interesting in a fairly naked cookie.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 cup of egg whites - if you end at an egg under a cup, crack another, erring on too much egg white.
1 tablespoon vanilla


Method:
Preheat oven to 350F.
Put parchment paper, silpat mats, or more grease than you think reasonable on 2 big cookie sheets. Let's just realize non-stick is a figment of the imagination.
Sift together the dry ingredients.
Mix together whites and vanilla with a fork in a vessel with a spout.
Stick dry ingredients into a mixer. Start on low/medium with the paddle attachment (say 2-3 on a Kitchenaid).
Slowly, slowly, slllooooowwwwllly pour in the egg mixture. Do you remember when I said slowly?? Literally dribble it in. Every 1/4 cup stop and scrape the sides.
Mixture will look dry and just wrong until the very end.
Place about 1 tablespoon each on the the cookie sheets, about 12 per sheet.
Bake 6 minutes, then pop out, reverse top/bottom and front/back, and bake 6 more minutes.
Let cool 1-2 minutes on the cookie sheet, until they're a bit hard, then move to wire racks to finish cooling.

Voila! Low-fat, gluten free cookies. But never tell anyone that.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

North Carolina!

So one of my friends and I decided to play hooky. Mostly so I could study for the Bar. Went to OBX for a few days.

On the way home, I bought some fresh (as in a few hours dead) shrimp, some corn, cute baby potatoes, and some luscious tomatoes. And when I say luscious, I mean I ate one out of hand in the car, with juice dripping down my chin. Sliced the tomatoes, and everything else went into a shrimp boil.

With the leftover tomatoes and corn, I made a corn and tomato pudding, in which I reduced the fat fairly decently.

Corn and Tomato Pudding (lower fat version)

Ingredients:

4 cobs corn, boiled and cooled
3 tomatoes, diced
Salt to taste
Chili pepper
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/4 to 1/2 cup cracker crumbs
A bit of olive oil

Method:

Cut the corn off the cob.
Toss together the corn and tomatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Place into casserole dish.
Mix buttermilk and egg.
Pour buttermilk and egg mixture over the corn and tomatoes in the dish. Mix well.
Mix just enough olive oil to moisten cracker crumbs, then spread on top.
Cook covered on 350 degree until hot through (roughly 45 minutes), then remove cover and raise heat to 425 F for about 15 minutes or until the top browns.