Raspberry-Cacao Nib Overnight Oats

Oh, hey! Remember me? It’s been a while. In fact, it’s been way too long. While I’ve still been making and eating lots of good food, my focus lately has been more on my running (I’m in the middle of training for a half marathon right now). A few weeks ago, though, I was browsing through this space, and I realized that I missed it. And soon it’ll be time to start making birthday cakes again (all our birthdays are from late winter to early summer), and those are my favorite posts to look back on! I’m not sure how I often I’ll be posting, but hopefully more than once every 10 months! I’m also on Instagram now (I post often). You can find me HERE.

I also wanted to mention that last May I decided to go vegetarian (heavy on the plant-based foods, light on the dairy and eggs), so you won’t be seeing any new meat/poultry/fish-based recipes on here (not that I was really posting them very often, anyhow, since I was never a huge meat-eater to begin with). I will leave on the previous ones, though, at least for now.

Anyhow, onto the recipe.

I’ve been making these overnight oats for breakfast at least a few times a week lately. I love being able to just pull a jar out of the fridge on hectic mornings, and it fills me up and gives me enough energy to run after I bring the kids to school. After defrosting overnight, the frozen raspberries break apart when you stir it, giving the whole thing a fruity flavor (and a pretty pink color!), and the cacao nibs give it a hint of chocolate and a crunch I love.

3/4 cup frozen raspberries

1 heaping tablespoon cacao nibs

1 tablespoon chia seeds

1/2 cup rolled oats

generous 3/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or use plain, and add some vanilla extract)

Optional: up to 1 tablespoon coconut sugar (or sweetener of choice)

1. Add all the ingredients to a jar, using enough almond milk to cover everything by a little bit (remember that the frozen raspberries will give off liquid as they defrost). I like my oats fairly thick, so if you want yours a bit thinner, add more milk. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

2. When you’re ready to eat, just give everything a good stir. That’s it!

Makes 1 serving

Stewed Peppers with Tomatoes, Onions & Garlic

Back when I first started blogging, I would photograph and post whatever I happened to have made for dinner that night. There was no planning posts ahead of time, no thought as to what “it” ingredients to use in my posts, no blogging schedule (which, obviously, is something I’m still horrible about). And while elaborate perfect-for-blogging recipes is fun, sometimes it’s the simple recipes that I really want to tell people about. The foods that I make regularly, and (I’m guessing) the things that my readers are probably a lot more likely to make for themselves.

These peppers are an example of that. I’ve been making these regularly for several years now, and the whole family loves them. In fact, I may have to start doubling this recipe, because every time I make them everyone wants seconds! I usually serve this with some really good bread (usually homemade), alongside a frittata or scrambled eggs for a simple but delicious dinner.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 large garlic cloves, minced

3 large red bell peppers, thinly sliced

Salt

1 (14 ounce) can diced tomatoes, partially drained

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring every now and then, until tender (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and bell peppers, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and cook 5 minutes more, until the peppers are tender.

2. Add the tomatoes and thyme to the pan, and season with some salt and pepper. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes, making sure to stir occasionally. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Makes 6 servings

Adapted from The Very Best of Recipes for Health, by Martha Rose Shulman

Onion, Feta & Olive Rolls

In my last post I left you all with half a batch of leftover Mother Dough, and a promise for a recipe to use it up. It took a while to get this post up, because I was enjoying time with Chaim while he was off from work over the holidays. But he’s back at work today, and it’s time for life to get back to normal. So here we go.

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my dough at first. I was thinking of doing another variation of the bagel bombs, but in the end I decided I wanted to something different. I rolled out the dough, spread caramelized onions over the top, scattered it with kalamata olives and feta cheese, then rolled it up and sliced it cinnamon bun-style, and baked them in muffins cups.

Filled with some of my favorite flavors, these are a perfect savory option for breakfast. They’d also be great alongside a bowl of tomato soup for a light lunch or dinner.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 large onion, diced

1/4 cups chopped kalamata olives (about 8 olives)

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/2 batch Mother Dough (find the recipe HERE), at room temperature

Flour, for rolling out the dough

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a 6-cup muffin tin.

2. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, and cook until a deep golden brown, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and allow to cool.

3. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about a 9-by 14-inch rectangle. Spread the caramelized onions over the top of the dough, all the way to the edged. Sprinkle evenly with the olives and feta.

4. Roll the dough up lengthwise, as you would cinnamon buns. Lightly push in on the sides of the roll to make a roll that is 12 inches long. Cut the roll into 2-inch slices, so that you have 6 rolls. Place each one into a muffins cup. Don’t worry if they fall apart a little, the cup with hold them together; they don’t need to be perfect.

5. Bake at 375°F for about 35 minutes, until the tops of the rolls are golden brown. Carefully remove the rolls to a rack to cool for a few minutes before serving. These can be made a ahead of time, but warm them up before eating them.

Makes 6 rolls

Tomato & Scallion Cream Cheese Bagel Bombs

Since I was already using my Milk Bar cookbook to make the pretzel ice cream, I thought I’d finally pay some attention to the small savory section in the back if the book. The chapter is dedicated to the bakery’s “mother dough”, a simple dough that is used to make all different kinds of savory goodies.

Bagel Bombs are a sort of all-in-one breakfast sandwich, with the filling baked right inside the dough. The recipe in the book uses a bacon, scallion, and cream cheese plug, but since we do not eat bacon (nor do we eat milk and meat together) I needed to come up with an alternative. Yes, I could have just omitted the bacon, and had a plain scallion cream cheese plug, but I wanted something with a little richness in there.

I ended up using some chopped homemade smoked-paprika oven-dried tomatoes in them, which was perfect. I served these for dinner with a huge salad, and everyone loved them!

Like most Milk Bar recipes, this is made up of a few components, but they can all be made ahead of time: the cream cheese plugs up to a month ahead, the everything bagel mix up to 6 months ahead, and the dough up to a week ahead. And once you’re ready to make them the assembly is pretty easy.

Mine all exploded in the oven (which is, apparently, quite normal). But I guess that’s why they’re called bombs!

Notes:

This recipe uses only half of the mother dough. I do have another recipe coming up that will use the other half but, if you prefer, you can double the plug & bagel mix amounts and make 16 bagel bombs.

If you’d rather, you can use jarred oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes (blotted dry with a paper towel) for this if you don’t want to make your own oven-dried tomatoes.

Tomato & Scallion Cream Cheese Plugs:

7 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons chopped oven-dried tomatoes (recipe below)

2 scallions, green part only, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1. Place the cream cheese into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat on medium speed until creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the tomatoes, scallions, sugar, and salt. Mix just until it’s incorporated.

2. Evenly divide the mixture into 8 portions, and place them onto a lined quarter-sheet pan. Freeze until solid, about 1 to 3 hours. If not using right away, place them into an airtight container and freeze for up to 1 month.

Oven-Dried Tomatoes:

Use whatever tomatoes you find that look good. Normally I’d use Roma’s, but even for this time of year they looked really bad, so I used tomatoes on the vine. You really only need about one tomato for this recipe, but make as many as you want—you can use the leftovers in a salad or panini (anywhere you’d use sun-dried tomatoes, really). Cut the tomatoes in half, scoop out the seeds with a small spoon, and place in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, and mix them with your hands to make sure they are all coated. Place in a parchment-lined baking sheet, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. Bake in a 250° oven for about 6 hours, until dry (but not bone dry; you want them to be fairly soft). Mine took about 7 1/2 hours, because my tomatoes were really juicy). Allow to cool.

Mother Dough

3 1/2 cups bread flour

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 1/8 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 3/4 cups water, at room temperature

grapeseed oil, to grease the bowl

1. Place the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer and stir together, using the dough hook like a spoon. Add the water, and keep stirring it by hand with the dough hook until the mixture just starts come together.

2. Attach the dough hook to the mixer, and mix the dough on the lowest speed for about 6 or 7 minutes, until the dough looks like a wet ball and bounces back softly when pressed.

3. Grease a large bowl with the oil and turn the dough out into it. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough sit at room temperature for 45 minutes (it may not rise much, and that’s okay).

4. Use the dough then, or store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for up to a week. Bring the dough to room temperature before using!

Everything Bagel Mix

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon white sesame seeds

2 teaspoons black sesame seeds

1 tablespoons dried onions

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl. Can be store in an airtight container for up to 6 months.

Assembly and Baking:

1 recipe Tomato & Scallion Cream Cheese Plugs (above)

1/2 recipe Mother Dough (above)

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon water

1 recipe Everything Bagel Mix (above)

1. Preheat oven to 325°F and line a large sheet pan with parchment paper.

2. Flatten the dough down on a smooth, lightly floured surface, and divide evenly into 8 pieces. Using your fingers (I lightly floured my hands, because the dough was a little sticky), gently stretch each piece of dough into a circle about 3 inches wide.

3. Place a cream cheese plug onto the center of each circle, and bring the edges up and around the plug. I used a bench scraper to do this, because the dough was sticking to my work surface (you can sort of see this in the pictures above). Lightly flour your hands, and gently roll the ball between your palms to make a round shape. Place them onto the sheet pan, 4 inches apart from each other.

4. Whisk together the egg and water, and generously brush onto the rolls. Sprinkle evenly, and heavily, with the bagel mix.

5. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the bombs are golden brown. Don’t worry if the cream cheese explodes out; that’s normal—you can leave it as is, or tuck it back into the bomb after it cools a bit.

6 Remove from the oven, and serve warm. If you are making these ahead of time, warm them up before serving. You can keep these, well-wrapped in plastic, in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Makes 8 Bagel Bombs

Adapted from Momofuku Milk Bar, by Christina Tosi

Potato-Apple Latkes with Cinnamon Sour Cream

I was so excited when, months ago, I found out that Thanksgiving was going to fall out during Chanukah this year. My first thought was that latkes were definitely going to be the potato side dish this year, and I was going to make a cranberry-applesauce to put on top of them, and it was going to be so. much. fun!

Except that for the past month or so Thanksgivukkah has been ALL over the internet. And guess what? I’m already tired of it. And it doesn’t even happen for another two and a half weeks.  It’s kinda like how pumpkin recipes started showing up everywhere on September 1st, and by the time October rolled around I was so over pumpkin recipes. Yeah, too much of a good thing can sometimes just be too much.

So, I may or may not be serving latkes on Thanksgiving; I haven’t decided yet. However, I probably won’t be making a big deal about the whole Thanksgiving and Chanukah colliding thing. But if you are looking for a recipe for latkes to serve for Thanksgiving or Chanukah (or both), here’s a great one to try. They’re a little bit savory, a little bit sweet, and a whole lot delicious!

2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and shredded (6 cups)

2 medium Gala apples, shredded (2 cups)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Grapeseed oil, for frying (or use any neutral-flavored oil)

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Demerara (raw) sugar, for garnish

1. Combine the potatoes, apples, and 1 teaspoon of the salt in a colander. Let the mixture stand for 20 minutes, pressing down every so often with the back of a large spoon to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

2. Pour the potato mixture into a large bowl, and add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt, the thyme, and black pepper. Don’t be stingy with the black pepper; you want a nice amount of it to play against the apples and the sugar. Add the flour, and mix well.

3. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, and coat the bottom of the pan with oil. In batches, add the latke mixture to the pan by 1/3-cupfuls, and cook for several minutes on each side, until golden brown. Keep a careful eye on them. If the darken too quickly, lower the heat a bit, because you don’t want the outside to burn before the inside it cooked (I used a cast iron skillet and had to lower the temperature a bit, because the pan gets really hot!). Add more oil to the pan as needed.

4. Remove the latkes from the pan onto a plate lined with paper towels to drain. You can keep latkes warm on a sheet pan in a 200°F oven while you prepare the next batch.

5. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream and cinnamon.

5. Place the latkes on a platter, top each with a dollop of the cinnamon sour cream, sprinkle with a bit of demerara sugar, and serve.

Makes about a dozen latkes, depending on how tightly you pack the measuring cup.

Adapted from Cooking Light