Cranberry Bread

My mom taught me just about everything I know about working in the kitchen.  She is a fabulous cook, and was kind enough to put up with me "helping" her for many years.  The only thing she didn't teach me was how to make a huge mess out of even the most menial task - that's a god-given talent that I've had since the day I was born, no lessons needed.  My mom's cranberry bread is one of my favorite things, and the perfect way to use some of the season's best cranberries, if you ask me.  I brought in a loaf to share with one of my small groups at school, and it was a hit with the medical students.  Enjoy!

Cranberry Bread

From the kitchen of Ellen

Ingredients

2 T melted butter

3/4 cup orange juice

~1/2 banana, mashed

1 egg, beaten

1 cup sugar

2 c flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1+ cup cranberries, halved (fresh or frozen)

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix the wet ingredients and sugar together, then add the dry ingredients until just combined.  Gently fold in the cranberries.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes.  This recipe doubles easily, so bake a second loaf to share.  

Pumpkin Bars with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Pumpkin is popular - and quite ubiquitous at this time of year, creeping into every kind of food or drink you can imagine. Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin scones, pumpkin risotto. Last night I went out to eat with friends, and there was even a pumpkin martini on the menu.  I don’t mean to offend any diehard pumpkin fans out there, but I think all of those uses of pumpkin should be banned!  No, not because I’m trying to kill the thanksgiving holiday spirit, but because I think all pumpkin should be transformed into these delicious bars.  Not sure if you’re all aware, but last year there was a shortage of canned pumpkin – its over now, but you never know when it will happen again.  And I don’t care how delicious that pumpkin martini is.  It cannot compete with these bars.  (Just ask Chris, who ate half the pan.)

Pumpkin Bars with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Adapted from Paula Deen, Betty Crocker, and Martha Stewart (now that’d be a dinner party!)

Ingredients:

For the bars:

4 eggs

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup applesauce (unsweetened)

15-ounce can of pumpkin

2 cups flour

2 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

2 t ground cinnamon

½ t ground ginger

1 t salt

For the frosting:

4 oz cream cheese, softened (at room temp is perfect)

2 T butter, softened

2 T maple syrup

1 t vanilla

2 cups powdered sugar

A splash or two of milk

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine the eggs, sugar, oil, applesauce, and pumpkin in a bowl.  Beat with an electric mixer until well-combined and no lumps of pumpkin remain.  Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt, then mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are combined and the batter is nice and smooth.  Pour the batter into a greased 9x13 inch pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

While the bars cool, use an electric mixer to combine the cream cheese, butter, maple syrup, vanilla and powdered sugar.  If your frosting is still too thick, add a tiny splash of milk (no more than 1 tablespoon at a time) to get the right consistency.  Spread over cooled bars, and enjoy!

The last bar awaits its end

Maple Glazed Salmon & Roasted Carrots

Wait – what’s this?  Two posts in one day?  AND it’s a Thursday (aka, exam tomorrow).  Perhaps this blogging thing is unhealthy.  Or at least the downfall of my academic career.  But I’m all studied out, and after a blustery October day I thought we needed a nice warm autumn meal.  This happens to be what we had on hand.  I pulled a couple pieces of salmon out of the freezer, found some carrots in the back of the fridge and – voila! – dinner is served. 

To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I ate a cooked carrot.  But late autumn weather like this just seems to ask for something “roasted.”  It even sounds warm and cozy.  As it turns out, they’re not that bad.  I think I prefer them crunchy, but as far as cooked carrots go these were pretty tasty.  The salmon, on the other hand, was delicious.  Both Chris and I were big fans of this recipe.  Simple ingredients, quick and easy to make – I think it will become a regular in our repertoire.  

Maple Glazed Salmon & Roasted Carrots

Ingredients
2 4-ounce salmon fillets

2 T maple syrup

2 T soy sauce

1 garlic clove, crushed

fresh cracked black pepper

4 carrots

olive oil

salt & pepper

1 T dried tarragon

Mix the maple syrup, soy sauce and garlic in a small baking dish, then coat the salmon and allow to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. 

Preheat oven to 400 F. Wash, peel and cut the carrots into equal sized pieces (so they cook evenly).  Toss with about a tablespoon of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper and the tarragon.   Place on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven – they’ll need to cook a total of 30-40 minutes.

Remove salmon from marinade, place on a baking sheet and sprinkle generously with freshly ground black pepper.  Bake in the oven (still at 400 F) for 18-20 minutes (if you plan it right, your salmon & carrots should be done at the same time).  Poor the remaining marinade into a pan and bring to a boil on the stovetop for 2-3 minutes.*

Serve the salmon and carrots with rice, topped with the marinade sauce. 

* Note: I’m currently taking a course on infectious diseases and I’m telling you, you want to boil this stuff.  Foodborne diseases are NOT NICE, and now I’m pretty paranoid.**  I can’t think of anything that I know of that is carried specifically by salmon, but I’m sure there’s something.  Shellfish can carry cholera, and perhaps your salmon was close friends with a shellfish.  You don’t want cholera, do you?

** Another note: Just for full disclosure, yes I licked the bowl when I made cookies earlier today.  Cookie dough is just so delicious, I think its worth the risk of salmonella.***

*** Another note: I might change my mind about that someday.

Caution: grease your pan.  This was a pain to clean.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

These cookies have an average post-oven lifespan of about 20-25 minutes in our house.  Chris is not usually a big dessert fan (I’m often stuck eating them all on my own…darn), but he scarfs down fresh cookies like none other.  I got out of lab early this afternoon, so I made a batch when I got home.  Since Chris likes them fresh, I bake up one tray of cookies, and then freeze the rest of the batch for later use. (By later, I mean probably tomorrow.  These don’t even last in the freezer.)

Also of note: this recipe makes a batch about half the size of a normal batch of cookies – perfect for two, but feel free to double it.  Or quadruple it.  Especially if Chris is coming over.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, softened

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup flour (all-purpose, or whole wheat if you’re feeling healthy)

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups instant/quick oats

1/3+ cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Cream the butter & sugar.  Add in the egg & vanilla, and beat until smooth.  Mix in flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt (I don’t believe in dirtying two bowls to make cookies, so just plunk these all in the bowl at the same time, mix them around a bit on the top, then stir into butter/sugar mixture.)  Stir in the oats and raisins.  Chill the dough for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator (or speed up the process in the freezer). Use ice cream scooper to divide into equally shaped balls, then bake for 12-14 minutes.  

I don’t love tons of raisins, but feel free to use more if you’d like.  I suppose you could also add some nuts, but we’re not big on nuts in cookies around here.  

Black Bean Soup

This past weekend I visited my wonderful friend Emily Jayne in Omaha.  One of the staples of any “Emilys” time is a trip to the grocery store and a long afternoon of baking in the kitchen.  We love all things food: reading recipe books (sometimes out loud to each other…yes, that really happens), watching Food Network, trying new recipes and sharing them.  Emily Jayne started a food blog this past year called “Freshly Grated Ginger,” and I’ve loved keeping up with her in the kitchen even from hundreds of miles away.  So this weekend, she suggested I start a blog of my own.  As she pointed out, I type recipes up all the time anyway to email to her.  This way, other people can read them, too.

I have no idea who these “other people” are, but I’m going to give a go anyway.  At least it’s one more way to put off memorizing a list of ACE inhibitors tonight.  I’ll take it.

I’m starting off with Chris’ favorite soup.  This is mostly because he’s been begging me to make it for about 4 weeks (which is about when the last batch ran out).  It’s an incredibly delicious black bean soup; it’s thick, smoky and spicy.  Perfect for a late October dinner (don’t mind the fact that its actually 72 degrees today).  Plus, cooking a big pot of soup early in the week is the perfect dinner plan for two busy medical students – delicious, easily reheated leftovers all week long!  Hypothetically.  When your husband eats 4 bowls of soup in a sitting, the pot only lasts 2 days.  But it should last you longer.  It also freezes well, if you can ever get any into the freezer before someone eats it. 

Black Bean Soup

Adapted from the recipe of David R. Peterson

Dinnertime!

Ingredients:

2 T olive oil

2 large onions, chopped

6-8 fresh jalapeño peppers, chopped, no seeds*

6-8 garlic cloves, chopped or crushed

6 cups chicken broth (or 6 cups of H2O with appropriate amount of chicken bouillion)

2 cups dried black beans (or 3-4 cups canned black beans…but poor med students use the dried kind)

1 large ham hock/shank (no idea what the difference is – we used smoked ham shanks for extra flavor)

2 T cumin

3 ~ 15 oz cans chopped tomatoes

¼- 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

2 T dry sherry 

 * Warning!  You might want to use gloves when removing the seeds/insides, or your fingers will be “spicy” for along time.  Leftover, unused gloves from anatomy lab work just fine.

If you’re using dried black beans, wash and sort the beans and put them in a pot with 5-6 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, and let them cook at a boil for 2 minutes.  Then cover, removed from heat, and let them set for at least 1 hour.  Drain before adding to the soup.  (Alternatively, I think you could let them soak overnight.  However, this would involve planning ahead, something I rarely do.)

In a dutch oven or large pot, add the olive oil, onions, jalapeños and garlic.  Sauté until soft, about 5-8 minutes.  Add the chicken stock, black beans, ham hock and cumin and bring the mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat and let the soup simmer for about 2 hours.  Add the chopped tomatoes and vinegar and simmer another 30-45 minutes. 

Here comes the fun part.  Remove ham hocks and blend the soup until smooth using the best kitchen appliance of all time: the immersion blender!  (If you do not own one, go buy one.  If you don’t have time right this moment, you can use a traditional blender.  Blend the soup in batches, and remove the middle part of the lid and cover with a kitchen towel to allow steam to escape.)  Add sherry. 

If you so desire, you can cut some of the meat off of the ham hock/shank and add it to your soup.   I’m a little picky about my meat, so I leave it out.  Chris loves it, though.  Do as you please!

Garnish with sour cream and cilantro, if desired.  Serve with toasted bread.  Enjoy!