Deep Fried...Something

Caramelized Mushroom and Onion Biscuits

I don't even remember where I saw this recipe, but I knew right away that I had to try it.  I haven't made many biscuits before, but I really enjoy caramelized mushrooms and onions so I decided to add it to my list of things to cook.  These were surprisingly easy to make, and came out even better than I expected!

Caramelized Mushroom and Onion Biscuits

Ingredients:

• ½ pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, separated
• 1 small yellow onion, sliced
• 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar or balsamic vinegar reduction
• Salt and coarse ground black pepper
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup vegetable shortening, cold and cut into cubes
• ½ cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
• 1 egg, beaten, plus 1 egg, beaten for egg wash
• ¾ cup buttermilk, cold

Directions:

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in a medium saute pan over medium heat.  Add mushrooms and allow to cook until tender and golden brown, stirring occasionally.  Add a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Remove from the pan. 
2. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter in the same pan.  Add onions and cook down until tender and browned, stirring occasionally.  Remove from heat, add the mushrooms back to the pan along with thyme, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.  Set aside to cool.
3. Preheat oven to 425°F
4. In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Cut in shortening and butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.  In another bowl, combine egg and milk and beat lightly with a fork.  Add to flour mixture all at once, stirring enough to make a soft dough.  Add the cooled mushroom and onion mixture and blend together.
5. Turn out onto a floured board and knead about 15 times.  Roll or pat out into a 1-inch thickness.  Cut into 2-inch rounds using a biscuit cutter or cut into 2×2-inch squares.  Reshape and roll dough to create more biscuits with excess scraps.    Place on an ungreased baking sheet, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.  
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes.  Serve warm as an egg sandwich or with gravy.  These biscuits are best eaten the day they’re made, but will last up to 2 days.

Notes:
The only thing I'll probably change next time is to make sure to brush the sides with the egg wash as well.  Otherwise, these were fairly simple and delicious biscuits!

Cheesy Butternut Squash Muffins

There are so many delicious combinations that come to mind when I think of muffins.  Lemon and poppyseed, apple and cinnamon, chocolate chip and more chocolate chips...and butternut squash and feta?!  I've never made savory muffins before, but I looked at the ingredients for this recipe and realized I liked everything that was in them so I decided to make them.  They came out pretty good, although it's still an adjustment for me to eat muffins and not have them be sweet.

Cheesy Butternut Squash Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into approximately half-inch cubes – you should have about 2 cups
• a sprinkling of salt and pepper
• a couple of handfuls of spinach, washed and chopped
• ¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• ¾ cup crumbled (in large crumbles) feta cheese
• 2 teaspoons of whole grain mustard (German style)
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup milk (I might also try this again with buttermilk, just for kicks)
• 2 cups regular flour (I bet you could also use a gluten-free flour blend with good results)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons salt
• coarsely ground black pepper

Directions:

1. Heat your oven to 425F. 
2. Toss the squash cubes with the olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast in the oven, stirring them up a couple of times, until they are tender through (easily pierced with a fork – I usually take one out, blow on it, and taste it to see if it’s done), and getting a little golden brown on the outside, about 15 minutes.
3. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
4. Turn the oven down to 405F. 
5. Grease a muffin tin well with oil or butter. 
6. In a large mixing bowl, stir together about two-thirds of the squash, the spinach, Parmesan, and ½ cup of the feta. 
7. In a small bowl, beat together the milk, eggs, and mustard until well combined.  Pour this into the bowl with the squash and spinach. 
8. Sprinkle the flour, baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt onto the squash and wet ingredients mixture.  Gently stir this all together until just combined. 
9. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin pan – it will fill the holes pretty generously. 
10. Sprinkle the tops of the batter-filled holes generously with freshly ground black pepper.  Then, press the remaining feta crumbles and squash cubes gently into the tops of the batter. 
11. Bake for 20 minutes, until the muffins are golden and a toothpick inserted into one comes out with no batter on it (it may come out with some melted feta on it, though!). 
12. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of each muffin and gently use the knife to lift them out and on to a cooling rack.

Notes:
I'll probably add some garlic next time I make these.

Quinoa Dinner Rolls

I saw a link to this recipe on Photograzing, and it looked delicious.  I love quinoa, and I love bread, so I figured I'd give it a try.  I made a few minor mistakes (see notes), but overall they came out better than I expected.  The crunchy quinoa on top is quite possibly the best bread topping ever.

Quinoa Dinner Rolls

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons (1 packet) yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup honey plus 1 tablespoon
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 cups bread flour
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• Coarse salt

Directions:

1. Place the quinoa in a pot with one teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon honey, and cover with the 2 cups of water.
2. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes, until quinoa has absorbed all of the water. Let cool. Set aside 1/4 cup cooked quinoa for sprinkling on top of shaped rolls.
3. In a large bowl (or in the bowl of standing mixer), dissolve the yeast in one cup of warm water. Add the honey, eggs, and oil.
4. Add the 2 cups of whole wheat flour and mix well.
5. Add 2 teaspoons salt and 2 cups of the bread flour and mix well.
6. Add quinoa and 1 more cup of flour and knead dough, adding last cup of flour as needed.
7. Knead dough (by hand, or with dough hook in standing mixer), until dough is smooth and fairly stiff (about 10 minutes). (Dough should pull away from the sides of the bowl in a mixer).
8. Place dough in oiled bowl and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours.
9. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
10. Punch down dough and divide into 16 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, stretching the top of the roll smooth and pulling the excess dough to the underside of the roll.
11. Place rolls, seam side down, on a baking sheet. Brush tops of rolls with melted butter, and sprinkle with reserved cooked quinoa and coarse salt.
12. Bake rolls for 10 minutes, then lower temperature to 375, and continue to bake for 15 minutes more. Rolls are ready when they are dark golden brown.
13. Serve warm.

Notes:
I made the mistake of not cooking the quinoa before moving on with the recipe.  As a result, I had mixed the ingredients (up to step 5) and then I had to wait about 10 minutes for the quinoa to be fully cooked and cooled so it wouldn't kill the yeast.  I'm a bread-making novice, so I don't know if this is why, but I ended up needing quite a bit more flour than the recipe called for.  I kneaded it in my stand mixer for a little over 10 minutes and the dough was still very sticky.  I took it out and kneaded in around another full cup of flour before it got to a consistency I was comfortable with.

I also made the mistake of cutting one of the rolls as soon as they came out of the oven, rather than letting them sit for a few minutes first.  As a result, the one in the picture is a bit more dense than the rest of them.

Overall though, I'm quite happy with how these turned out.  This is my first "real" bread, and it turned out more than just edible!

Salted Ginger Oatmeal Cookies

Guest post from Sarah:

So Judah's been pretty into Tastespotting lately, and this weekend when I was checking out his photo that had been linked on the site, I found myself perusing all kinds of recipes. Many of them were ones I shouldn't have been looking at when I'm trying to eat more healthy foods, but one I simply could not resist -- Salted Ginger Oatmeal Cookies. Unfortunately, the link didn't have the recipe (since we don't have a Cook's Illustrated subscription), but we do have Baking Illustrated, and the referenced recipe is in there.

The original poster took the CI Ginger Oatmeal Cookie recipe variation and rolled each cookie in Maldon sea salt. We didn't have that, but we did have some French Gray Sea Salt that Judah bought from Penzey's a few weeks ago just for fun. I thought this sounded like a pretty good use for some of it.

Without further ado, here's the recipe, courtesy of Baking Illustrated:

Salted Ginger Oatmeal Cookies

Makes about 18 large cookies

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (I used regular ole ground nutmeg since that's what we had)
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

Directions:

1. Adjust the oven racks to the low and middle positions and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or spray with cooking spray.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, nutmeg, ginger and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Either by hand or with an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy. Add sugars; beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
4. Stir the ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture using a wooden spoon or large rubber spatula. Stir in the oats.
5. Working with a generous two tablespoons each time,  roll the dough into 2-inch balls. Roll the balls in salt of your choice. Place the balls on the baking sheets at least two inches apart.
6. Bake until the cookie edges turn golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheets front to back and top to bottom half through. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for two minutes. Transfer to a wire rack. Let cool at least 30 minutes.

Notes:
I was a little afraid of over-ginger-ing the cookies, especially after opening the container of ground ginger and catching a whiff, so I only used 1/2 teaspoon of ginger instead of the 3/4 called for. Next time, I would absolutely use the full 3/4. Also, my rolling of the cookies in the salt got a little inconsistent (and made a messy process even messier), so next time I would sprinkle the salt on before baking.

But overall: Yumminess was achieved. I would suggest checking the cookies a little early if you do the salt thing. Some of mine were a little crispier than I would have liked, but I also think I made some of the balls too small as the recipe said it made 18, and I ended up with 24 and could have made a couple of more.

Scallion Cheese Puffs

I originally saw this recipe here, and it looked too good not to try.  This was my first attempt at baking bread-like food in a long time, and they came out really well.  Next step: something with yeast.

Scallion Cheese Puffs

^{Picture from original recipe}

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 5 extra large eggs
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1  cup gruyere cheese, shredded
• 1/2 cup scallions, sliced thin (white and light green part only)
• 1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• shredded gruyere for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine water, butter, and salt into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. 
3. Remove from heat, and add the flour all at once.  Whisk vigorously  for a few moments, stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened and is pulling away from the sides of the pan, a minute or less.
4. Stir in 4 eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next.  Stir in the cheese and the scallions.
5. Line a shallow baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop the batter by the tablespoon onto the baking sheet, spacing the puffs about 1 inch apart.
6. Beat the remaining egg with a teaspoon of water in a small bowl. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the tops with the egg. Sprinkle lightly with shredded gruyere.
7. Bake for about 20 minutes on center rack, until they are puffed and golden brown - they should sound hollow when tapped. They can be made a few hours in advance and reheated at 375 degrees for about 5 minutes. They freeze well - just thaw and reheat in a 375 degree oven again for 5 minutes or until heated through.

Notes:
The recipe says it makes 18, but I had 24 on my baking sheet with a little batter left over.  I think I also made them slightly too big (heaping tablespoons), because they took around 25 minutes to be fully cooked.