Champurrado

Seriously, I feel like I’ve been missing something. Mexican chocolate. I mean I’ve had a Mexican hot chocolate before but have never experienced the pure form of it. The deliciously sugary, cinnamony thick tablets of sweet dark chocolate. It’s a serious love affair, and I’m going to find more and more reasons to sneak these into desserts…or my morning coffee. You’ve been warned – forgoing the recipe in favor of just eating the chocolate did not seem like an outlandish option after the first bite.

Atoles are a group of masa-based Mexican and Central American hot drinks with champurrado a specifically chocolate one. The drink consists of water or milk with masa, spices like cinnamon and/or anise, and chocolate in the case of champurrado. The masa acts as a thickening agent to create a drink that can range in thickness from a pudding-like consistency to a thinner liquid.

As the weather continues to cool, the thought of a warm, spicy chocolate drink crept into my mind, and I thought I would explore this version over the traditional Mexican hot chocolate. Champurrado is actually a Christmas drink, though it’s also had for breakfast, often with churros. That’s the breakfast of champions if I ever knew one….would not mind it myself.

I happened to find this luscious Ibarra Mexican chocolate at Whole Foods along with the masa harina I used to thicken it. Although the chocolate is sweetened and has cinnamon, I added a touch more of both along with some vanilla bean for good measure. The result is thick, rich, warmly spiced deep hot chocolate with a hint of that sweet corn flavor. Totally addictive. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Serves 4

4 cups milk

2 tablets Mexican chocolate, chopped into little pieces

1/3 cup masa harina

¼ cup light brown sugar

½ tsp salt

1 cinnamon stick (optional)

½ vanilla bean, split and scraped or ¼ tsp vanilla powder (optional)

Procedure

In a saucepan, warm 1 cup of milk on low (want it warm enough to melt the chocolate). Pour into blender and add chocolate pieces and masa harina. Blend on high for 30 seconds, and strain back into the saucepan.

Add remaining milk and ingredients and heat on medium-low. You want to slowly bring the mixture up. Once the mixture begins to bubble, reduce heat to low and let simmer 10 minutes until it thickens and the cinnamon and vanilla have infused.

Serve immediately!

FYI – It’s natural for a skin to form as you’re cooking. Feel free to remove before pouring.

Crispy Salt and Pepper French Toast

Savoury, crispy French toast. Salty, with a heavy hit of black pepper. This was one of my favorite Sunday breakfasts growing up, the smell of the toasts frying up a scent memory that still takes me back.

This fried bread I grew up eating, called khara pao (khara means “spicy”), is South Asia’s answer to French toast, typically served with a kicked-up tomato ketchup. My family was partial to black pepper, but I’ve seen turmeric, chili powder, cayenne and even cumin added. And South Asia’s not the only one that goes the savoury route. In other cultures, they do similar-style “eggy toasts” – Italy’s has mozzarella and tomato sauce, Russia’s is simple salt, egg and milk, and Hungary serves theirs with onions, tomatoes, ketchup and even mayonnaise…

This version is so ridiculously easy to make, and requires ingredients we all usually have on hand. I’m a savoury brunch person myself, and this is such a delicious alternative to sweet French toast. The crispy, salty, pepper-heavy toast dipped in a cool, spicy, slightly sweet, tomato-ey ketchup is a truly heavenly combination that will quickly move into your go-to, I-have-leftover-bread-and-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-it rotation. Breakfast or even as a mid-afternoon snack – enjoy!

Ingredients

Serves 4 to 6

French Toast:

5 eggs

3 tbsps half-and-half

1 tsp salt

2 tsps black pepper

1 ½ tbsps green onions, finely chopped (optional)

1 ½ tbsps cilantro, finely chopped (optional)

vegetable oil

butter

8 (½”) slices day-old bread*, cut on the diagonal

Sauce:

Ketchup

Sriracha or your favorite hot sauce

Procedure

In a bowl or baking dish, beat together eggs with half-and-half, salt, pepper, green onions, and cilantro.

Heat a medium or large skillet over medium-high heat. Cover the bottom of the skillet with vegetable oil and add a tablespoon or two of butter for taste.

Dip the bread triangles into the egg batter, drain off any excess, and place straight into the hot pan. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes on each side – you want to develop a golden-brown color and the texture should be crispier than traditional French toast. Place cooked toasts on a paper towel-lined plate or rack to drain.

In a small bowl, mix together ketchup and hot sauce to your desired heat tolerance.

Serve toasts warm with a side of the spicy ketchup.

*I like to use a country or pullman loaf for this. You want it to stand up to the egg batter and not get mushy, so I always go for a day-old loaf.

Sweet Apple Couscous

I sort of jumped the gun and went apple picking this past weekend. I couldn’t help myself. I’m a sucker for fall, the first cool change of temperature and all the apple picking, pumpkin patch wandering, and wine-tasting (I threw that in there…). It’s a bit early in the season, so where I usually come back with several different varieties I ended up with who-knows-how-many pounds of Honeycrisps. They are literally overflowing in my kitchen, so I’m pressed to find ways to use them up…Luckily, they are delicious, the perfect balance of sweet and tart, and hold up well to cooking.

Couscous, while a North African staple, has truly become popularized and is found throughout parts of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Eastern Europe, and across the Middle East. Here, in the States, I’ve seen it creep onto dinner tables because of its incredible versatility and high nutritional content compared to rice and pasta. North African cooking, particularly Moroccan, is full of sweet and savoury dishes – with spices like cardamom or cinnamon bridging the gap. So couscous as a sweet side dish or a dessert does exist, though I surely haven’t seen any Berber recipes with apples…

For this dish, I was inspired by (obviously) the mass of apples in my kitchen, the sweet couscous recipes of North Africa involving dried fruits and nuts, and even the rice puddings of American and South Asian cultures (though this has no cream or milk). This dish is extraordinarily simple, healthy and delicious. It’s basically cooking a warm, buttery apple pie filling, folding it in to light, fluffy, sweetened couscous, and topping it with nutty, crunchy thin almond slices. The textures are beautiful and who can resist the combination of apples and cinnamon. A great fall dish… enjoy!

Ingredients

Serves 4 to 6

2-3 tbsps butter

5 cups apples, peeled, cored, and cut into a small/medium dice

½ cup brown sugar

¾ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 cups couscous*

2 cups water

3 tbsps butter

1/3 cup sugar

½ tsp salt

½ cup sliced almonds, toasted

Procedure

Place a skillet on the stove over medium heat and melt the butter. When the foam subsides, add the diced apples and stir to coat. Turn temperature slightly down and cook on medium-low heat for 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes to make sure the apples evenly cook. Add brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla to the apples and stir to coat. Cook for another 5 minutes. The apples should be soft but still hold their shape (not complete mush).

In a casserole dish, spread couscous out to an even layer. Cooking it in this type of dish will increase surface area and keep the resulting texture light and fluffy. In a saucepan, bring water, butter, sugar and salt to a boil. Pour over couscous, stir briefly with a fork, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let sit 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes, remove the plastic wrap and fluff couscous with a fork – the butter should keep the grains separate and prevent any clumping.

In the same dish or another serving bowl, mix together the couscous with the apple mixture and top with the toasted sliced almonds. Serve warm.

*I used the typical, plain, non-whole wheat, pre-steamed variety from the grocery store. Be careful not to use the tri-color type, which has spinach and tomato flavoring, or Israeli couscous, which is larger and requires a longer cooking time.

Pomegranate-Rose Milk Pudding

A few weeks back, I read two separate articles that helped inspire this dish. One discussed Sephardic culinary traditions that originated in North Africa, and the other addressed using rose water in modern cooking. Milk pudding thickened with rice flour, and often scented with rose water, is a traditional North African and Middle Eastern dish called malabi (in Israel), sutlage (in Turkey and the Balkans) or muhallabeya (in North Africa and rest of the Middle East). With the Jewish New Year passing and Yom Kippur coming up, I thought this could be a beautiful, sweet dish for the Break Fast meal.

Before starting this dish, I decided to dig a bit deeper and chatted with a friend of mine whose family comes from Sephardic culture, and she clued me in on a few things. First, her family eats something sweet immediately after the fast to get their blood sugar up. She also said her family clears the table after, so a dish like this, which has dairy, is totally fine. For a parve version, coconut milk (regular, lite or even half diluted with water) would work well as a substitute for milk.

But it was the symbolism I found even more interesting. Pomegranates have special significance because the number of seeds in the fruit corresponds with the mitzvots, or commandments of the Torah. Fascinating! Also, I plated these in individual, circular bowls to signify the full circle of the coming year, another symbolic gesture.

After all of the importance, the taste just seems secondary…but thank goodness because it is tasty! The fruity tartness of the pomegranate is offset by the sweet milk and the vanilla notes, and the rose comes later…almost like you are smelling it rather than tasting it. I love sprinkling the pomegranate arils on top for a juicy crunch to offset the texture of the pudding. This is delicious regardless of time of year! Enjoy…

Ingredients

Yields 4 to 6 servings

3 pomegranates, juiced, or 3/4 cup unsweetened pomegranate juice*

½ cup rice flour

4 cups milk

½ cup + 2 tbsps sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 ½ tbsps rosewater

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses (optional)

Procedure

Place a medium-sized bowl over a pot of simmering water (not touching the water and at a medium heat) or use a double-boiler for this recipe.

In a small bowl, add the rice flour to the pomegranate juice in increments, whisking until thoroughly combined. You don’t want any lumps.

Heat the milk in the top of the double boiler. You should see bubbles around the edges, but the milk shouldn’t be boiling. Add pomegranate juice with rice flour, sugar, vanilla extract, rosewater, salt, and pomegranate molasses if using. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes until thickened.

Again, there shouldn’t be any lumps, so blend with a hand blender if you happen to have a few. Ladle into serving cups or one large bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 4 to 5 hours.

Serve garnished with pomegranate arils.

*For the recipe, I seeded (messily…) 3 pomegranates, blended the arils, and strained out the juice. You can more easily do this in a juicer if you have one. If using bottled pomegranate juice, it’s definitely more concentrated than juicing the fruit, so I wouldn’t add the optional pomegranate molasses. Also, be careful of the sweetness if the pomegranate juice has added sugars…

Quick Bread with Bacon, Medjool Dates & Nigella Seeds

I was reading this article in the New York Times on what the French call a cake salé, and it inspired me to create my own exotic version. A cake salé is close to what we call a quick bread or a quick loaf in America (think zucchini bread, cornbread, or even muffins).

The main ingredients of any quick bread are flour, baking powder (and/or soda), fat, eggs, and liquid; the flavor is really up to the imagination. It’s chemically leavened, so it’s much faster to make than traditional bread, which requires a whole process leavening with yeast. This loaf is incredibly easy to make and really versatile. I’ve been serving it warm for breakfast, but it would also make a delicious lunch paired with a simple salad.

I mentioned to a girlfriend the inclusion of dates in this bread, and I got a wrinkled nose reaction. She believed dates to be the shriveled up nonsense that’s in trail mix. At that point, she hadn’t tried Medjool dates, which are amazing – plump, sweet, and creamy with thick, soft flesh and a taste closer to caramel and honey than to fruit. (She’s now addicted). They are also incredibly nutrient dense, high in fiber and an excellent source of potassium. They are eaten throughout the Middle East, to break a fast or served with a thick, Arabic coffee at the beginning of a meal.

For this recipe, I couldn’t get the idea of bacon out of my mind. I’m such a fan of sweet and savoury – it’s a richness of flavor that can’t be matched – and bacon tastes fantastic with a hint of sweetness. With the caramelized leeks, the honey of the dates, and the slightly bitter, thyme-like bite of the nigella seeds, the flavor of the bread is really well-rounded – great as a stand alone but also wonderful as an accompaniment to a larger meal. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Yields 1 8½” x 4¼” x 2¾” loaf pan

4 slices bacon, chopped

3 tbsps butter

1 leek, white and light green only, thinly sliced

1 ½ tsps nigella seeds

salt

3 dates, skinned and pitted*

¼ cup + 1 tbsp vegetable oil

3 eggs

1/3 cup milk

1 ¼ cups flour

1 ½ tsps baking powder

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Heat a skillet over medium-low heat. Add bacon and cook until just starting to crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon into a bowl to cool.

Heat another, clean skillet on low. Add butter. When foam subsides, add leeks and stir to coat completely with the fat. Add nigella seeds and a few pinches of salt to draw out the moisture. Cook on low, stirring frequently, for 15 to 20 minutes until the leeks are well caramelized. Remove with a slotted spoon and add to bowl with the bacon.

Combine dates, oil, eggs, and milk in a blender or food processor. Blend for 30 seconds on low or pulse until dates are finely chopped. This helps to distribute the dates in the batter. The goal isn’t to have them pureed, just chopped a bit more finely, so they don’t clump in one place in the batter. Add this liquid to bacon and leeks, and stir to combine.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and pepper and whisk so that all of the ingredients are well combined. Fold in the liquid to the dry ingredients using a spatula. Do not overmix. You just want everything to come together. It should be a wet, sticky, clumpy dough – like muffin batter.

Pour batter into a greased 8 ½ “x 4 ½” loaf pan. Bake at 350° F for 40-45 minutes until golden brown.

* To remove the skin from the dates, simply heat water to a boil. Pour over dates and let sit for 1 minute. Carefully remove from the water, and peel off skin – it should slide off easily.

Savoury Roasted Cinnamon Popovers

I just looked at the title of this, and my mind immediately went to a breakfast association. The interesting thing is these popovers were conceived as a thought for an awesome dinner accompaniment: a hollow, savoury, buttery puff with which to scoop up extra sauce or even a jus.

I was eating Van Leeuwen cinnamon ice cream (out of the container) when I came up with the thought for these tasty treats. Van Leeuwen, which creates incredible artisanal ice cream, uses a Ceylonese version of cinnamon – the flavor reminiscent of Atomic Fireballs, those crazy hot candies we ate as kids that turned our tongues red. Although lovely, I prefer the more woodsy and subtle flavor of Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon…Which I’ve read is actually a version of the cassia plant, not cinnamon after all.

Cinnamon is such a diverse spice and is a staple ingredient in many savory ethnic dishes; it adds such complexity and nuance to even a simple marinade. Whether part of Indian garam masala or a Mexican spice blend, the added note can elevate a simple dish to something much greater. Pan-roasting the cinnamon deepens the smoky-woodiness of the spice, which makes this even better as a savoury side. And who doesn’t love a popover? I mean their shapes alone are comical. And there is something about serving a warm baked (from scratch!) good at dinner that is suggestively decadent.

The best part is that this is a super easy recipe with ingredients most of us have on hand. Oh, and I’ve tailored it for use in a muffin pan. I feel like I don’t make them often enough to warrant the expense of popover tins and much prefer the smaller size. Although easy, the recipe is not without science, because getting these little guys to rise can be nerve-wracking. I’ve done it a million times and still stand watch peering through the hazily-lit oven (never open!) to make sure they are on track. So read the procedure carefully. And enjoy some luxurious dinner (or breakfast) popovers…

Ingredients

Yields 12 popovers in a traditional muffin pan

1 stick cinnamon or ¾ tsp ground cinnamon (Vietnamese, Saigon, whatever you like)

1 cup AP flour

½ tsp salt

1 cup whole milk

2 eggs

1 tbsp melted butter

melted butter for brushing

Procedure

Lower the rack in your oven to the 2nd rack from the bottom, and preheat oven to 450° F. Keeping the rack lower will prevent over-browning of the popovers.

Pan-roast cinnamon sticks or ground cinnamon in a sauté pan on medium-low heat until fragrant and toasty. If using sticks, grind in a spice or coffee grinder. You want to yield ¾ of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

Combine milk, butter, and eggs in a blender. Blend thoroughly. Add flour, cinnamon, and salt, and pulse until thoroughly combined. Don’t overmix. I like to pulse, scrape down, and blend until it just mixes through. You want to let the batter stand and come to room temperature (around 20 to 25 minutes). A room temperature or even slightly warm mixture will rise much higher and easier than a cold one.

When the batter is almost ready, place the muffin pan on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 5 – 10 min. You want to preheat the tin, and placing it on a baking sheet creates better heat from the bottom – again, all good for the rising of the dough. When hot, brush the muffin pan with butter to prevent sticking.

Fill the cups about halfway full and immediately place in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes at 450° F, and then lower temperature to 350° F for another 20. Don’t peak at them or they will fall! You want to keep the oven heat even. The puffs should be crusty on the outside and soft and hollow on the inside. I shut the oven off and leave the door slightly ajar, a technique used for gougeres, for another 3 to 5 minutes just to make sure.

Serve these delicious puffs warm!

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Champurrado

Crispy Salt and Pepper French Toast

Sweet Apple Couscous

Pomegranate-Rose Milk Pudding

Quick Bread with Bacon, Medjool Dates & Nigella Seeds

Savoury Roasted Cinnamon Popovers