I made granola and reminisced about Minneapolis

I realize we already have a granola recipe here, but you can never have too many granola recipes, right?

So I visited my friend Leah last week in Minneapolis, and it was a perfect midwest mini-vacation. Leah is an amazing host, and one of the highlights of the trip was eating her homemade granola with yogurt and white nectarines (why can't I find good nectarines here??) every morning.

Another culinary highlight of the trip was the Juicy Lucy (sometimes spelled Jucy Lucy), which is a cheeseburger with the cheese in the middle of the burger. Maybe sometime I will try to make those. (The photo of Leah above was taken in the oddly-oriented restroom of Matt's, the bar in Minneapolis where Jucy Lucys were invented. Or weren't. Check wikipedia, I guess.)

Another culinary highlight of the trip was this drink: Jameson whiskey and R.W. Knundsen's Simply Nutritious Lemon Ginger Echinacea juice.

But back to the granola! I was thinking of calling Leah to ask her how she made it, but I didn't want to wake her up (why am I making granola at midnight?). I think she said she used Smitten Kitchen's recipe? So this is an adaptation of that.

Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup coconut chips
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup chopped almonds
2/3 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
cinnamon
salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup dried figs, chopped (man, I could take pictures of figs all day)

Method:

Preheat oven to 375. Line a shallow baking pan with parchment paper. Shoo the cat away from the ingredients.

Mix together all the ingredients except the dried fruit, and spread mixture evenly on the baking pan. Bake for 15 minutes, checking on it and stirring it a couple times. Add dried fruit, and bake for 5 more minutes.

Remove from pan and cool. And, oops, pick out the burnt bits. Next time, readjust oven temperature / baking time.

And this I learned from Leah, as well as from Smitten Kitchen: keep the granola in the freezer! It will stay crispy forever that way.

Hey you want some granola? Sounds good, let's have some when we go back inside.

I made chana masala

I'd been meaning to make this since I saw it on Smitten Kitchen months ago. I finally got around to it on a recent chilly Sunday, and it was perfect: pretty easy to make, hearty, and very spicy. This dish, like most Indian food, requires a well-stocked spice cabinet. Other than that the ingredients are pretty inexpensive and easy to find. EXCEPT amchoor powder, which I couldn't find anywhere. But good old Deb says lemon juice is an acceptable replacement.

Chana Masala

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 medium onions, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 fresh, hot green chili pepper, minced
1 tablespoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper (I used a quarter of this because my cayenne is extremely hot)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 tablespoon amchoor powder
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon garam masala
2 cups tomatoes, chopped small or 1 15-ounce can of whole tomatoes with their juices, chopped small
2/3 cup water
4 cups cooked chickpeas or 2 (15-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 lemon (juiced) (see note; I used a whole lemon to swap for the amchoor powder)

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add onion, garlic, ginger and pepper and sauté over medium heat until browned, about 5 minutes. Turn heat down to medium-low and add the coriander, cumin, cayenne, turmeric, cumin seeds, amchoor (if using it), paprika and garam masala. Cook onion mixture with spiced for a minute or two, then add the tomatoes and any accumulated juices, scraping up any bits that have stuck to the pan. Add the water and chickpeas. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, then stir in salt and lemon juice.

Serve over rice. We drizzled the finished product with some raita that Natalie whipped up. It was a nice way to counter the spiciness.

I made joey's mama's sauce and it was the best sunday afternoon project EVER!!!

This is just a note to say that a couple Sundays ago, I made Joey's Mama's tomato sauce, and it was a very rewarding experience. Making sauce from scratch seems like such a labor intensive, exact science, but it is really not that hard, and any sauce you buy in a jar really does not compare. The only thing that is at all laborious is that you have to cook it a long time--i cooked mine for about three hours--but that's why it's a good Sunday activity. You get it on the stove, do some laundry, go to the gym, give it a stir once in a while. No big deal! And THEN you freeze what you don't use right then, which will be a lot. Here is a list of things I have made with this sauce:

-spinach ravioli in sauce
-angel hair pasta in sauce with sauteed eggplant and romano cheese
-ricotta filled whole wheat tortellini with chunks of roasted butternut, sauce.
-POLENTA PIZZA (this baby will have its own post.)

The only changes I made to Mama Vallese's sacred recipe is that I added some glugs of red wine (which I've seen Joey do when he makes it, so i figured it was ok), and sauteed some garlic with the vegetable mush before adding the tomatoes.

and i mushed those vegetables in a bowl with my trusty hand blender. i am telling you. you can do anything with that thing. it is the most universal kitchen appliance.

ok that's it. make this sauce this sunday. you won't be sorry. it will be really fulfilling.