Lembas?

I am in the habit of experimenting with recipes, but when I have people over I'm not necessarily willing to experiment on them.  However, I am perfectly willing to deploy experiments that have proven their worth at past gatherings, and I want to share one of them

This afternoon I hosted a mini-reunion for some of the people in my academic program back in Chicago who are now out here in DC - some working for the government, some not - in honor of another member who is still in school at Chicago but came out for the March for Life (yes, well, no one's perfect).  Because I spent most of my time cleaning, I didn't have hours to spend in the kitchen, so I threw together this recipe, which I developed out of a recipe for shortbread and now serve as a cake.  I share it because it's quick, it's easy, and you cannot mess it up (you'd really have to try).  And it's so good I've taken to nicknaming it lembas - after the elven waybread from J.R.R. Tolkein's masterwork.

Oatmeal Shortbread
1 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1-1/2 c. quick-cooking oats
3/4 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the salt, spices, and vanilla.  Gradually add the oats and flour (you can add them all at once, but you have to stir more).  Press the dough into a greased 9-inch round cake pan (or another size, if you prefer) and bake at 325 for roughly half an hour - because there's no egg you don't need to worry about undercooking - just cook it long enough for it to no longer be wet and sticky, or until it passes the toothpick test (an inserted toothpick comes out clean).  I've been topping this with failed toffee that K gave me, which melts down in the oven to make a lovely sugary top, but once that runs out I'm not sure what I'll use instead.  Brown sugar, I suppose.

This is my lembas.  Of course, I don't know if the elves had oats.  And there are others who purport to have a recipe for lembas.  A quick Google search reveals a raisin version (to which I object on principle, because there weren't raisins in lembas, surely, or Tolkein would have mentioned them), a lemon version, an almond version (right out, since J is allergic to almonds), and this honey and orange version which, unlike the others, appears to have some research behind it.  I can't get behind the idea of fruit in lembas, though, because I feel like that's a detail that some character would have remarked on, or that Tolkein would have used as a descriptor.  I can't help but envision them as a sort of honey shortbread, and while my recipe doesn't have honey in it, I'm sure I could do some tweaking...

(Yes, you did just a read a whole paragraph in which I speculated about the composition of a fictional bread from a fiction series and then pondered changing a recipe in the real world to reflect a fictional unknown.  If you think that's bad, you should see how I used to react to Harry Potter.)

If you have an idea for lembas - or any other recipe you'd like to share - leave it in the comments.  I'm going to go have my [elven?] cake and eat it too.

Culinary Adventures: Beer Thanksgiving

Because most young federal employees like me don't have enough vacation days to take off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have to make a choice - and inevitably, we choose to save our days for Christmas.  This leaves us to our own devices for Thanksgiving.  This time last week I was on my way to "Friendsgiving" at S & D's and brought along homemade brownies (not a very good recipe though - they taste good, but they don't look it).  Since K&R and I all had to "work" yesterday, we decided not to celebrate Thanksgiving on the actual day, but on the following Saturday - today - as an organized sort of potluck.  But whenever  K has potlucked Thanksgiving with friends she has a culinary theme.  Last year it was bacon (I went home, so I missed it), and this year, it's beer.  Everyone who brings food has to have worked beer into it somehow.  I jumped at the opportunity - I love a good culinary challenge.

All right, you think.  Baste the turkey with beer, and serve beer, and perhaps put beer in the stuffing, but how to work beer into everything?  Doesn't sound easy, does it?  Below, with one exception, are the results of my own efforts:

The exception is the batch of cookies in the upper right, which have no beer in them and are not intended for Beer Thanksgiving.  They're intended for me.  But the upper left is beer bread, and the lower right are cornbread muffins with beer in place of milk.  Have a closer look:

I'm still working on my food photography, but I think that's a tolerably good photo.  And furthermore, these are really easy.  The base is Jiffy Cornbread Mix which, as a Midwesterner, I swear by.  All you need to do is follow the instructions for cornbread muffins and substitute 1/3 c. of beer (relatively dark, so it has some flavor) for the 1/3 c. of milk the recipe calls for.  I used Killians (the bottle on the left in that first picture) because I only had one bottle of Guinness, given to me by K&R so I could make beer bread:

Now, if you like beer in your food, you'll be pleased to know that this is almost as easy as the muffins are.  Just take 3 c. of self-rising flour, add 3 Tbsp. white sugar, and one bottle of dark beer, like Guinness (don't do this with Miller Lite or it will taste like wallpaper).  Mix and pour into a greased loaf pan, then bake at 350 for 45 minutes, brush the top with butter, and bake for another 15 minutes.  (Honestly, though, it was practically done after the first half hour, so since you're supposed to brush the top with butter once a crust forms, I did it after that half hour and then put the loaf back in for the 15 minutes, and got what you see - I suspect this is because I had it on the bottom rack).

Both the muffins and the bread smell delightfully of beer when hot, and I'm sure they'll be a hit.  I just need to pack them up, change clothes, and toddle over the K&R's for my third (!) Thanksgiving!

(Oh, and if you want the recipe for those cookies, just ask.  They're amazing.)

 Om nom nom nom nom...

On Lentils

The humble lentil is a magnificent addition to anyone's cuisine, as I have proved today by converting two friends to its wholesome discipleship (I'm tipsy, so forgive the loquaciousness).  You should consider it too.  I will explain how this has anything to do with my life, thus:

I spent the morning cleaning, organizing, and started putting things on the wall, but then two married friends from Chicago who have since moved to DC - just two blocks away, oh happy convenience - with whom I had delicious Turkish food last night invited me over to bake challah, a delicious braided bread, so I happily abandoned my labors (most appropriate for Labor Day - laboring, I mean, not abandoning labor; we're unionized now, you know) and went over.  I spent a very pleasant afternoon helping not just in the preparation of challah, but also putting up shelves, assembling a desk, folding laundry, strategizing the hanging of pictures on the wall, and gossiping.  But due to the volume of work and the length of time it takes to make challah (two risings, baking time, and so on), it soon came to be 7 and we hadn't had dinner yet.  For someone born and bred in the Midwest, this is unspeakable heresy (which is why I'm writing it instead), so I suggested that they come over to my place where I would whip them up some lentil soup in under half an hour.  Since they had not yet seen my apartment, this seemed a great idea, and with freshly baked challah to eat with the lentils, a fortuitous one as well.

If you've never made lentils, listen closely, because they are both cheap and healthy, virtues which appeal to me and my friends (students we may no longer be, but student loan payments have a way of making one feel as though one were a student again, complete with the minuscule food budget, even if this is not actually the case).  Not only are they cheap and healthy, but they are also incredibly easy - you can prettify them all you want, but stripped down to the basics, lentil soup in half an hour is a breeze.  You will need:

1 bag of of lentils - generally this means one pound, which is two cups, if you're curious.
8-9 cups of water
About 3 bouillon cubes or their equivalent - your choice of flavor, though I prefer beef and chicken.  Add more cubes if you like your broth richer, but I warn you, bouillon has a lot of salt.
Spices as you desire.

And now the promised blessed simplicity.  Rinse the lentils.  Put them in the water.  Add bouillon and spices.  Boil.  Bring down to simmer until lentils are tender (generally around 20-25 minutes).  Eat them.

It's really that easy.  I cheated this evening because I wanted them fast and added the lentils to boiling water for the first ten minutes (which actually made precious little difference) but it's better to let them simmer so they can take on the spices more easily (also, too much boiling will turn them to mush).  What spices, you ask?  Whatever you want them to taste like, of course.  The classic is onion, garlic, and basil, but tonight I used a mix with garlic, white onion, white pepper, salt, ginger, and hickory which is intended for pork chops but is also magnificent on lentils.  It might be fun to try them with red pepper, or even curry.  You may also add some meat to augment the bouillon, like a bit of bacon, some andouille or chorizo sausage, or whatever you have lying around (some ham is good; so is a left-over bratwurst chopped up).  I suspect they would be phenomenal with lamb - they are, after all, a Mediterranean staple.

So why not try adding lentils to your diet?  I can get a pound of them for ninety-five cents at the Safeway up the street, and with some interesting spices, good bread, and a bottle of red wine, you're set for a delicious, healthy, and cheap dinner (and a pound serves between four and six people).  Now don't say I never taught you anything!

Getting to Know One's Oven

I've been invited to dinner at the home of some friends who preceded me to Washington and, as I usually have when I dine with them, am bringing dessert.  This, of course, requires use of the oven, something I hadn't done since moving in.  If I am to bake at anything like the rate I did back in Chicago, it's high time I got to know my oven.  (I had already used the stove top, and am pleased to report that it's fin, although the fact that the dials are numbered from 1 to 6 rather than 1 to 10 as they were in Chicago threw me much more than I expected it to.  I'm going to have to start thinking of 6 as high heat, a change from thinking of it as in the middle.  Why aren't these things standardized?)

As I was pressed for time, I whipped up the fastest recipe in my collection, a heavily-edited one which began as Lebanese cookies with a honey glaze (delicious but time-consuming) and has since become a sort of Lemon Tea Biscuit (I keep changing the name).  As I did back at Tales from Second City, here's a picture of the goods:

Yummy, no?  They're sweet and sandy (because the original Lebanese recipe called for oil instead of butter, and I've kept doing it because it gives a different texture from my butter-based cookies), and I'm pleased.  I've discovered that this oven runs about fifteen degrees slow (better than the thirty to fifty degrees I had to deal with in Chicago), but I expected it to - gas stovetops are great, but gas ovens, not so much.

Do you suppose I could get a hybrid?

(P.S.: If anyone wants recipes, either for the original Lebanese cookies or my variation, just ask for them in the comments and I'll put them up.)