Springing into Green: Collards and Chard

There is a brief window in spring when my Maryland garden is lushly verdant. When the so-called lawn springs joyously forth, requiring Benny and his boys to mow maniacally over it every five days. When the bunnies boldly brave the prowling neighbor’s cat to nibble on the emergent lilies to my great ire, prompting me to rethink my vegetarian diet. When the foolishly delicate David Austin roses bloom all-too-briefly in this hopelessly non-English garden, before the voracious Japanese beetles arrive and the sun burns off all but the most plebian of the Black Eyed Susans. Before the crescendo of the emergent 17 year Magicicadas drowns out any pretense of genteel patio conversation. On such a day as this, we harvested spring greens from our backyard patch. Sturdy collard leaves, Swiss Chard with their comically colored bright stalks of yellow and red, darkly green spinach.

Fold the washed leaves in half, and pull/slice out those pretty stalks unless they are really tender. Then layer, roll lengthwise and slice through to make a chiffonade of fresh ribbon-like greens.

Collard Greens with Cumin Potatoes

Not being Paula Deen, I was not going to ham hock the living daylights out of these innocent botanical beauties, boiling them blandly for hours with only salt and pepper for company. Instead, I began by flavoring a couple tablespoons of hot oil with a satisfying sizzle of cumin seeds, fennel seeds and crushed red pepper flakes. To this, I quickly added some slivered ginger and sliced garlic.

Next, I added lengthwise-sliced potatoes. I used three medium sized red ones. Tossed them in the spices and flavored with a big pinch of turmeric and coarse salt. Covered and cooked on low until the potato slices were nearly done, crispy and slightly browned on the outside.

Add the sliced collard greens, toss and cover for about 5 minutes on medium-low heat. If you need to, add about a quarter cup of water at this point.

Layer on your favorite spice mix: I have an ongoing love affair with Tagine spice, so that’s what I used. Squeeze some fresh lemon juice over it all. At the last minute I tossed in a handful of golden raisins and sliced almonds. Why? Because they were there. If George Mallory could set forth for Mt. Everest “because it’s there“, surely I may be permitted to ad hoc my ham-hockless collard greens sans Deen? This was so good that my 14 year old picked off collard festooned potato wedges every time he found an excuse to walk by.

Dal Puree with Tomatoes and Chard

I made this dish because I had some pre-cooked mix of lentils (split urad dal and mung dal) languishing in the refrigerator. This time, I added black mustard seeds and nigella seeds to a tablespoon of clarified butter or ghee. These infuse a slight bitterness and texture to the smoothness of the dal. When the mustard seeds popped, I added a sliced red onion and tossed it on high heat. The shredded chard was mounded on, but it quickly collapsed into a more manageable mass.

Next, I added the cooked dal, a couple of diced tomatoes and flavored it all with salt, turmeric and ras al hanout, which is really a fancy Moroccan version of garam masala. This also received the benediction of freshly squeezed lemon juice at the very end.

I would have tossed in some chopped cilantro from our herb patch but our neighbor spied a black rat snake slithering amongst them yesterday. So I passed, despite all logic and the knowledge that my husband had heroically transported the serpent, dangling from a stick, into the blessedly vast woods behind. There are some benefits to winter, after all.

Test Driving a Tagine

Tagine. The very word conjured up a magical mirage of Marrakesh and Casablanca, dashing Berbers and belly dancers, hookahs and saffron-laced spicy stews.  I gazed at the overpriced albeit charming hand painted glazed clay artifact in the Williams Sonoma store, and in a fit of self-indulgence, bought it. My children were less impressed. “It’s a pot”, explained the world weary, newly minted college graduate. The beatnik teenager sniffed the air hopefully, “Mom bought pot?”

Tagine and harissa sauce

Online, opinions and advice flew in, fast and furious. You’ll need a heat diffuser for the stove top. Don’t place it in a preheated oven. You have to temper it first. Just use it as a serving dish. The clay will leach heavy metals. Never try to wash it until completely cooled. Intimidated, but determined, I applied the same (lack of) logic I use to call upon divine spirits to bless our laboratory research. I soaked the tagine overnight, then rubbed in some olive oil, and baked it for an hour despite a strong suspicion that the glazing on the pot made this exercise unnecessary. I sent my husband to the store for some tagine spices. Prudently, he purchased every exotic mix he could find: Harissa, Za’atar, Ras-el-hanout.  The aromas were all-too familiar though: cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon. “Mom, you’ve been had”, the 14 year old wisely concluded, “It’s Garam Masala”.

Vegetable Tagine

Tagine Vegetables clockwise from top: butternut squash, red onion, potatoes, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, carrots and beans.

Sliced onion sauteed with minced garlic and ginger

Spices, clockwise from top: coriander powder, tagine spice mix, turmeric and saffron

Toast the spices, briefly, with the lightly browned onions.

Add a cup of tomato puree. Add salt to taste.

Toss the sauce with the cubed vegetables and chickpeas. Mound them into the tagine base. Cover with the cone shaped lid and place in oven. Turn heat up to 350F.

Bake for an hour until the aroma is heavenly and the vegetables are fork tender.

Garnish with fresh herbs.

Serve on a bed of couscous cooked with a touch of olive oil, parsley and lemon juice. Garnish with lime wedges.

Clean up was a breeze!  My husband dug into his plate, saying “Mmm…all it needs is some lamb”. He was assigned dish washing duty for making mischief.

Spring has sprung in Maryland!

Magnolia blooming in the yard.

Easter bunny knows I’m a vegetarian and grows bold.

Hyacinths bloom even as the opportunistic weeds poke through. I’d better get to work!

 

Fun With Furans: Making Flat Bread with Fenugreek

The first reports of a strangely seductive aroma wafting over Manhattan, Queens and nearby New Jersey began in 2005. People smelled maple syrup, which got them fantasizing over pancakes and waffles. No doubt, the local Denny’s did brisk business. But there were enough calls to 311 to set the authorities sniffing. It was not until 2009, after the Department of Environmental Protection analyzed dozens of air samples and computed wind routes, that Mayor Bloomberg announced the mysterious source: a spice factory in New Jersey that processed fenugreek.

Sotolon, or more precisely 4,5-dimethyl-3-hydroxy-2[5H]-furanone, is an extremely strong aroma compound. In low concentrations, it smells like maple syrup, caramel or burnt sugar, and at high concentrations it evokes the smell of curry and spices. It is the major aroma and flavor component of fenugreek and lovage, but also flavors rum, white wine, aged sake and tobacco. Why you complain, New Yorkers?

Remarkably, fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is used three ways: as a spice, herb and vegetable. The yellowish cuboid seeds (methi) are roasted and widely used in Indian cooking, the dried leaves (kasuri methi) are used as herb, and the fresh leaves (methi) are cooked as greens (as in my recipe for Alu Methi). This time, I chopped the leaves up finely in my food processor and incorporated them into a verdant and pliant dough, to make methi parathas, a flaky, flat bread full of flavor.

Flat bread with fenugreek leaves (methi paratha), flavored by my favorite furan, sotolan

• For the dough, add 0.5 cup of chick pea flour (besan) to 2 cups of wheat flour (atta). You can omit the besan, but it imparts a distinctive texture and aroma that is irresistible. Add a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil when making the dough. Normally, I skip the oil when making ordinary Indian flat breads (chappatis), but it helps to have a softer dough when making the stuffed varieties.
• Add a pinch of turmeric, chilli powder, cumin seeds and salt to taste. Chop up a green chilli or two if you want it hotter. I made the dough in the food processor, adding water slowly until the dough just began to form clumps. Turn out on the counter top, knead briefly and let it rest covered.

Fenugreek leaves, washed and de-stemmed

Make the dough with minced fenugreek, spices, whole wheat and chick pea flour. Let rest, covered, for half an hour.

Roll out into a circle

Spread a thin layer of oil on the surface

Make a cut to the center, then roll dough around the cut end to form a cone

Flatten the cone into a circle, in the palm of your hand. Note the concentric layers in the dough.

Roll out the dough again. This time, the circle has concentric layers that make the paratha flaky.

Cook on a hot griddle with a scant teaspoon of oil on each side until light brown spots appear

Leftovers are delicious packed for lunch! I served the methi paratha with black eyed peas, roasted wedges of brussels sprouts with cumin seeds, topped off with a cranberry raisin relish. The green chilli is to get my endorphins going.

We were too hungry to wait for any more photos, so I’m sharing the left overs with you. I hope you enjoyed my favorite furan. Until next time, I’ll leave you with a substitute for the cheery yellow flowers of fenugreek and a walk down memory lane.

Path leading from my conference in the village of Les Diablerets, tucked away in the Swiss Alps (banner picture).

Strawberry Scones and Civili-Tea: A Pragmatist’s Valentine

Strawberry Scones and Civili-Tea

Ours is a pragmatic partnership. A marriage made by matchmakers. Social, economic and educational equity? Check. Common Genetic Pool? Yes, his grandmother and mine are cousins once removed. Horoscopes matched? Expeditiously ignored, unless the meeting does not go well in which case the alignment of stars will turn out to be sadly (but conveniently) out of synchrony.

It begins with an elaborately casual tea staged at my future in-law’s home: Eligible Bachelor #1 meets Nubile College Grad under four pairs of fondly hopeful parental eyes. Bachelor drops his teaspoon and is struck dumb. Bachelorette studiously ignores the handsome klutz and strikes up an animated discussion with groom-to-be’s father. Not an auspicious beginning. Considering that the chick will soon fly the coop (my tickets to America purchased, scholarship to graduate school in hand), the situation warrants bringing in the heavy weights, no less than a sari-clad replica of the Dowager of Downton Abbey! Post haste, the grandparents arrange a second meeting in neutral territory and after some masterful maneuvering I find myself tête-à-tête amidst the bougainvilleas and overgrown crotons of my grandmother’s garden. Two years later, we are married and have so remained for more than two and a half decades although I tossed off my sacred mangalsutra immediately and my husband has never worn a wedding ring.

Tête-à-tête amidst the overgrown crotons in my grandmother’s garden. Circa 1983.

It should therefore come as little surprise to you, dear reader, that Valentine’s Day passes by unnoticed in Madamescientist’s household.  I’ll pass on the roses, thanks. But that one and half hour ride from Baltimore to Philly on a snowy Sunday morning, so I can chair a meeting before flying on to another in Houston..that is much appreciated, thank you! So when my virtual friend and fellow blogger Michelle shared a recipe for heart shaped strawberry scones, I thought it would be nice if we emerged from our respective corners to raise a cup of cheer in memory of that fateful tea party so many years ago.  I should note that I considered myself a gardener until I came across Michelle. She is a Master Gardener. Her weekly diary chronicling her potager garden in the south of France (with Dayo the cat) both delights and enchants.

Strawberry Scones

• Begin by preheating your oven to 425 F.

Strawberries for scones

• Chop a cup of ripe strawberries or partially thaw some frozen ones.

• Cut 3/4 stick of unsalted butter (6 tbs) into small cubes. Keep it cold.

• Mix the dry ingredients: 2.25 cups flour, 1 tbs baking powder, 0.25 cup sugar (more if you like your scones sweet), 0.5 tsp salt.

• Add the butter and using your hands, distribute it hither and thither. Yes, it is messy but it will soon get stickier. There should be pea sized particles of buttery goodness randomly dispersed through the flour mixture. Mix in the strawberry pieces.

Mix in chopped strawberries

• Now add 1 cup of cream. By now I have flour on the tip of my nose and in my hair. To compound the problem, I used my hand to stir everything up but you will use a spatula as Michelle recommends, since you will read these instructions more carefully. Notwithstanding the sticky mess, turn out the dough on the counter top and gently pat out. I didn’t bother using a rolling pin. (Never mind that I couldn’t locate my biscuit/cookie cutter at this point and became obsessed with finding one. So I stuck the dough in the fridge, ran out to the local store which carries no heart shaped cutters, only circular ones. Oh well, I will cut out paper hearts instead).

Quickly pat out the dough, trying not to warm it too much.

• Working quickly, place cut out scones on a baking sheet.

Place cut-out scones on cookie sheet.

• Bake for 15 min or until golden brown. Let cool.

• Make a wonderful mess by putting some confectioners sugar into a tea strainer, placed over a small bowl. Using a knife, tap the strainer so that sugar is dusted over your paper heart placed on top of the scone. Remove the heart and admire the pattern. This goes pretty quickly, much the same as my patience.

Tea for Two

From the jaggery-sweetened chai sold in tiny earthen pots at Howrah Railway station, or the cardamom-infused Assam tea served mid-afternoon by the Southern housewife in brimming stainless steel tumblers, to the weakly elegant Nilgiri infusion steeped in tradition, bone china and the lace doilies of elegant urban drawing rooms, tea is a treat all over the Indian subcontinent.

• I bring 2.5 cups cold water to a boil. To that, I add a few cloves, lightly crushed cardamom pods with shells, a slice or two of ginger and some black peppercorns.

Spices for Tea

• Pour into a teapot with 3 tsp of loose leaves (one for each cup and one for the pot!). You will need a strong brew to stand up to the addition of spices and milk.

A strong brew

• Meanwhile, heat some milk. Adding cold milk to hot tea defeats the purpose of a hot drink!

The rich mahogany color of masala chai!

So there you have it. Tea for two shared over memories of red roses from my spring garden ..better than any hothouse bouquet. Hope you find your rose garden too.

Mini roses in casual disarray

A Rose on the Bush is worth a Dozen in your Hands!

The Venial Vegetarian: With Apologies to Asians

It was back in the eighties and the young Chinese waiter must have stepped off the boat just as I had, with a hope for material or mental advancement in the promised land of America. I chose my favorite noodle dish, Lo Mein, which was offered with a choice of pork, shrimp, chicken or beef.

No beef, I said firmly. The young man nodded and bowed. No pork, I continued. No shrimp. No chicken. Puzzled, he left, only to return within minutes. No pork? More vigorous shaking of the head, mutual bowing and smiling. No shrimp? He turned away, hesitated, and gave his last shot at reason, no chicken? Nope. Defeated, he left my table but gazed at me pensively, from the baize door to the kitchen. I watched, as his face lit with comprehension and he hurried back to me beaming! Hindu, he announced triumphantly! Well, I was more of a lapsed Hindu, but since I had been raised on the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence towards all creatures, I shared in his joy of having discovered the reason behind my meatless madness.

Menu outside Korean restaurant in Seoul- the Bamboo shoot wine could be vegetarian!

I’ve never been able to get past the mental block of eating meat. I like to think that I’m logical enough that should I be stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but cadavers, the will to live would rule supreme. I once proffered this opinion to an evangelistic vegetarian convert and she never spoke to me again. This pragmatism served me well on a recent trip to South Korea where the concept of vegetarianism is not exactly clear. “It’s just soybean”, my friend assured me, as I spread the homogenized paste on a cabbage leaf and took a bite, “with only a bit of shrimp”. Oops, sorry! He was all apologies as he guided me to fried and battered zucchini rounds. I savored the humble vegetable with relief and reached for a second one. Too bad it was battered fish.

Supper in Seoul

What’s a vegetarian to do, but cook up decidedly unauthentic alternatives guaranteed to have no fish sauce <shakes fist at Thai restaurants> or errant morsels of meat that find their way into the wok? I know I’ve looked down my sharpish nose at those generic “curries” while guiltily making my own transgressions into a foreign cuisine.  So I offer abject apologies to authentic Asian cooks everywhere, while serving up my favorite non-denominational “Asian” dinner…fast, flavorful and free of flesh.

No-Recipe Tofu

The tofu is delicate, not deep fried, in this dish. Perfect for soaking up the complex flavors in the spicy sauce.

No Recipe Tofu: too simple to write down

• Begin by cubing a block of firm tofu. Finely chop an inch of ginger, two cloves of garlic, a couple of fresh green chilies, and a few scallions.

Cube tofu, mince garlic, ginger, green green chilies, and scallions

• Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok or seasoned pan. Add a pinch of crushed red pepper and let sizzle (not burn!).

• Add the scallions, chilies, ginger and garlic and stir around until they look bright green and smell heavenly.

Stir fry scallion mixture

• Add the tofu cubes and mix gently.

Add the cubed tofu

• Add the trifecta: chilli-garlic hot sauce (Sriracha, store bought or homemade), hoison sauce, and black bean paste. I use about a tablespoon each, but use less hot sauce if you can’t stomach it.

Add sauces

• Drizzle some soy sauce, a few drops of sesame oil, and stir it all together.

Stir the sauces and tofu gently together

Baby Bok Choy Stir Fry

This is a recipe adapted from my friend David Crowley’s blog Cooking Chat. A feast for the eye, it combines the fresh crunch of stir fried vegetables with the roasted richness of cashew.

Stir fry of bok choy

Baby bok choy

• Roughly chop a couple small bok choy, white and green parts. Chop a red pepper into similar size pieces.

Chopped bok choy and red pepper

• For the sauce: Mix 3 tbs soy sauce, 1 tbs honey, 2 tsp rice vinegar and 1 tsp sesame oil. Add a clove of minced garlic.

Mix together soy sauce, honey, vinegar, sesame oil and minced garlic

• Stir fry: In a tablespoon of vegetable oil on high heat, toss together the bok choy and red pepper until just tender but still brightly colored.

Stir fry the red pepper and bok choy on high heat

• Add the sauce, and blend together. Add roasted, whole cashew nuts.

Stir fried baby bok choy with red peppers and cashews

Ginger Noodle Salad

This one is lifted, with thanks, from my Korean friend Shinae Robinson’s recipe (check out her food blog, Ridiculously Hungry). I didn’t have any pickled ginger (“gari”) on hand, so I quickly made my own with help from the internetz.

Ginger Noodle Salad

• Make your own Gari: Thinly slice fresh ginger (I used a vegetable peeler). Sprinkle with coarse salt. Meanwhile, heat some rice vinegar in a small saucepan. Add sugar and wait for it to dissolve. Most recipes call for a third measure of sugar for each of vinegar. Add the ginger and watch in amazement as it turns a little pink. I’m told that a “quality” rice vinegar will enhance the pinkness. I guess mine was of modest “quality”. This keeps in the fridge for months, and can be used right away.

Note to self: Look for tender ginger next time

• Cook some noodles- soba would be great, but I only had some spaghetti on hand.

• Make the dressing: Mix together 1 tbs soy sauce, 1 tbs sesame oil, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp (more or less) Sriracha or chilli-garlic sauce, 0.5 tsp sugar. Toss in the warm noodles.

• Add the greens: Mix together with juliened, sushi ginger (a generous fistful), a few handfuls of salad greens (arugula, baby spinach and endive would be delicious), and any thinly sliced fresh veggies you have on hand. You could use scallions, cherry tomatoes, radish or bean sprouts.

Here are some sights around S. Korea that I managed to catch in between sessions of the International Plant Biology Meeting on Jeju Do.

Columnar basalt on the southern shore of Jeju island, S. Korea

Cheonjeyeon Waterfall, the Pond of the Emperor of Heaven. Legend has it that seven nymphs would descend from the heavens at night and bathe in the waterfall’s pond.

View from the Sangumburi crater where the slopes are covered with Eulalia flowers (Miscanthus sinensis).

Ilchibung Peak (Sunrise Peak ) is a dead volcano on the eastern-most point of Jeju island.

View down Sunrise Peak where female divers known as the haenyo, or “sea women”, bring in the sea’s bounty.

With the dol hareubangs, or stone guardians, of Jeju.

From Protein Folding to Punjabi Pea Paneer

Muttar Paneer served with chappatis

Making fresh Indian cheese, or paneer, used to be a bit of a production in my home. My mother would start with not-so-fresh milk (why “waste” good milk, was her reasoning), bring it to a boil and then add lemon juice. In fascination, I watched the rapid separation of flocculant white curd from transparently greenish whey. That was my first encounter with the biochemistry of protein denaturation, although I would go on to ruin perfectly good batches of enzymes during my graduate career.

Beta lactalbumin is a milk protein designed to carry a lipid in its calyx-shaped pocket.

Proteins must be folded properly – into elegant ribbons, twisted helices, graceful loops and tight turns – not only to function properly but also to stay in solution. Too much heat, salt, acid or any number of adverse conditions cause proteins to unfold just enough to get their sticky inside parts to glom together. In a concerted show of protest, they leave the solution as a precipitate. Which brings us back to cheese. The curd is gathered into cheesecloth and suspended over a bowl to drain, before being packed into a brick under some heavy pots and pans. These days, one just reaches into the freezer of the local Patel Brothers for a perfectly rectangular brick of paneer.

So there is absolutely no reason why you should not make this quintessential Punjabi dish of peas and paneer, called Mattar Paneer. Notice that the gravy is vegan, with richness of cashew nuts in place of dairy cream. You can make this dish entirely vegan by replacing the paneer with baby potatoes boiled in their jackets (Alu Mattar..mmm!) or a cheese substitute of your choice.

• Begin by cubing the paneer.

Cube the paneer

• Fry the paneer pieces in 1-2 tbs oil in a well conditioned or non-stick pan until it is lightly golden.

Shallow fry the paneer until golden brown

• Transfer to a bowl of water. The excess oil floats away and the paneer stays moist instead of turning rubbery.

Transfer paneer to a bowl of water

• Roughly chop an onion, 2 cloves of garlic and an inch of ginger.

• Add whole spices to a heated tablespoon of oil: a few cloves, peppercorns and short sticks of cinnamon. When the spices darken and release their fragrance, add the chopped aromatics.

Add aromatics to the whole spices

• Saute on medium-high heat until lightly browned.

Lightly browned onions and spices

• Transfer to a food processor and blend with a handful of roasted cashews. This is the basis of the gravy.

Add roasted cashews to the browned aromatics

Gravy base

• Back to the pan: to another tablespoon of oil, add cumin seeds, bay leaves and a couple of dry red chilies.

Roast whole spices: bay leaves, cumin and dry red chilies

• Next, add the gravy and heat through. It does not look appetizing at this point.

Simmering cashew-onion gravy base

• So add some turmeric, red chili powder and coriander powder. Season with salt and a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peas. Add a cup of crushed tomatoes. Now it looks good, doesn’t it?

Doctored gravy: add tomatoes, turmeric and spices

• Gently fold in paneer cubes. Add frozen peas at this point, since they have already been blanched during the packing process. I used fresh peas this time, and I boiled them until they were tender but still freshly green. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Fold in the peas and paneer

I served the Mattar Paneer with chappatis (Indian flat bread) and home made yogurt.

Mattar Paneer served with chappatis and yogurt

My most harrowing tale of protein denaturation harkens back to my graduate student days when I was studying the ATP synthase. I had grown 13 liters of E. coli in a fermentor (translation: buckets of bacteria), broken them in a scary high-pressure French Press, spent a couple weeks running between ultracentrifuges and cold room columns until finally, I had my prize- 185 mg of pure ATP synthase in a tube. I handed it, lovingly nestled in an ice bucket, to my collaborator, a senior postdoctoral fellow, who proceeded with the next step of dissociating the complex into its subunit proteins. As I watched in horror, the entire protein precipitated, irreversibly, into a white, insoluble mass! I stared accusingly at the postdoc, who quickly defended himself, “The water must be bad”. Before I could stop myself, I retorted, “The postdoc must be bad”. We’re still friends, and I hope some day to dish up some mattar paneer and memories of precipitating proteins with Marwan.

In Memorium: I was deeply saddened to learn that Marc Ponomareff, a dear friend and frequent commentator on these posts, left us on Dec 3 after a long and courageous battle against cancer. Marc’s brilliant writing, humor and wit, and particularly the grace with which he bore his burden of illness will be sorely missed. We shared a love for spices, slapdash cooking and a zest for life. This one is for you, Marc.

The Guilty Baker: Orange-Cranberry Mini Muffins

Just as procrastination inspires industrious bouts of housecleaning, guilt brings out the baker in me. I had been flying solo all week, while my husband basked in Florida on some pretext of simulating NASA satellite software (why couldn’t the tests be run in good old Maryland?). By Thursday, I had run ragged with the stress of haranguing my 14 year old out the door and into the school bus by 6:22 am. Dinner degenerated into nachos and guacamole.

So it was that by the next morning, sharp pangs of guilt (or was it hunger?) gnawed at my maternal conscience as I dawdled over my morning coffee. When I came across a speedy recipe for orange muffins, I decided to face that burden head on. By 8:30 am, a dozen of these little delights were bagged and bound for the lab, while the house smelled of sugar and spice and all things nice. Welcome back, honey. Yes, I’ve been baking and slaving in the kitchen all week.

• Preheat the oven to 400 F and bring two eggs and half a cup of milk to room temperature. Line muffin cups with those frilly paper liners. They make a moister product. I didn’t have any, so I used my usual non-stick muffin pan.

• Zest two oranges using a microplane grater, taking care to avoid the bitter white pith.

Orange Zest

• Add the dry ingredients to the orange zest:

2 cups white flour

0.5 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

0.5 tsp salt

• My variation has a handful of dried cranberries and chopped pecans (the original   recipe called for chocolate chips). Mix well.

Mix the dry ingredients..

• Whisk together wet ingredients:

2 eggs

0.5 cup orange juice

0.5 cup milk

0.25 cup canola (vegetable) oil

Whisk together the milk, OJ, eggs and oil.

•  Pour the wet into the dry. Mix together with sparing movements. If you overdo it, you’ll have tough muffins.

Blend together, but don’t overmix..

• Fill the batter into the muffin tins. Oops, I ran out of batter before filling them all.

Baking is not an exact science, even if they say it is. Anyway, they also say that good cooks make lousy bakers. I say, the proof is in the muffin. Oh, for fun, I sprinkled some sugar on top of each batter filled cup. 

Baking is not an exact science

• Bake for 20 min, checking a few minutes before to see if a knife inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

Not quite FoodTV, but you get the idea…

The tang of orange zest and cranberries was a delicious counter to the sweetness, with bits of pecan surprise in every other bite. The edges were a bit tough, so I think I will try the muffin liners next time.

Mini muffins…just out of the oven.

Do you like the cross-stitched napkin? I embroidered the set when I was a pigtailed school girl. My mother saved them for me all these years.  Now that I’ve established my Martha Stewart creds, I hope we can keep that junk food dinner between us, okay?

Showing off my cross-stitchery skills.