Kumquat Carrot Cake Muffins

Like clockwork. Every time the weather warms up a little, I get an urge to bake. 

Am I self-sabotaging before bikini season? Seeking heat inside to match the heat outside? Or maybe...it's all in my head. 

But alas, here we are, daffodils a-peepin', cherry blossoms a-blossomin', and me. A bakin'. 

These came about because D thought he liked kumquats even though I had never seen him eat a kumquat and he doesn't like very sour or bitter things. Nevermind! We bought a whole sackful at a raucous grocery store in Flushing. 

Turns out D doesn't like kumquats... and so we were left with three pounds of kumquats and two stomachs that couldn't quite take them eaten whole. 

So here we are, the kumquat carrot cake muffin. These are strictly more muffin than cake. I wanted to round out the assertiveness of the kumquat while still keeping its essential character -- ie: not throwing a lot of sugar at it. I used coconut and turbinado sugar for texture and a sweet musty complexity. But if sugar is what you want, do it! That's what jam is for. 

RECIPE: 

2 cups kumquats, seeded and sliced

2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup coconut sugar 

¾ cup vegetable oil
⅛ cup white sugar
⅞ cup turbinado sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

3 large eggs 

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt 

3 cups grated carrots
1 cup raisins
½ cups walnuts (optional) 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut and seed the kumquats. Place in saucepan with butter and sugar. Simmer on medium until the kumquats are soft and pliant, about 6 minutes. 

Using the paddle attachment of a mixer, blend the oil, sugars, and vanilla extract. Add eggs one by one until mixed. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. While the mixer is on medium, slowly add half the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add the carrots, raisins, and walnuts. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.

Grease a muffin pan. Spoon the kumquat mixture so it just coats the bottom. Add the carrot cake batter into each cup about 80% full. Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then reduce to 350. Bake until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Large muffin tins will bake in about 25-30 minutes. A small muffin tin will bake in about 15-20 minutes. Cool completely before removing from the tin. 

Eat in your preferred fashion. Here I had some with a dollop of Rhubarb and Meiwa Kumquat jam from Sqirl. 

Los Angeles Eats: Sqirl in Silverlake

New Yorkers visiting LA, here's a tip. On your first couple days, don't worry about adjusting to the new time zone. Get to Sqirl early -- it opens at 6:30am for drinks and pastries during the week, and the kitchen heats up at 8am. No line, just morning light and the best breakfast in your recent memory. (Or in my case, maybe ever??) 

I like breakfast/brunch as a social event, but as a meal, it's not my thing. Pancakes and waffles knock me out for the rest of the day. I love eggs, but they get boring easily. Benedict, omelette, with a side of bacon (even if it is maple-glazed, submerged in a Bloody Mary, thick cut from a heritage pig...) Meh. I'd rather have an interesting dinner plate. 

But Sqirl! I will fully admit that I'm a sucker for avocado toasts and chicory lattes, handmade almond milks and jams. But even D who is wary of anything hyped and twee loved it. We went twice over four days. 

Here's what Mark Bittman said of Jessica Koslow's cooking in the NY Times: 

Instead, it’s a kind of gentler version of dinner food, with little or no meat, but often with eggs and seasonings from the southern and eastern Mediterranean and much of Asia, and yet somehow, in the end, quite American. Nothing is bland or insipid, and much of the food is laced with a sharpness that comes from lemon juice and hot sauce and garlic and pickled things. For breakfast food, it’s downright revolutionary. 

Yep. We're used to breakfast "notes": cheese, potatoes, hollandaise, bacon, buttery carbs, maple syrup. But what Koslow brings is something else entirely. 

Take the "Green Eggs and Jam", caramelized onions, creamed spinach, wild arugula, and a toad in the hole in Clark Street Bakery bread. It's addictively savory, without crutches of cheese or pork. The bread is key, soft and pillowy, just a whisper of sour. Each bite hits on every register from sharp and peppery to sweet and slow-cooked. 

And then there's the sorrel bowl, with Kokuko Rose brown rice, sorrel pesto, preserved Meyer lemon, lacto-fermented hot sauce, pickled radish, sheep's milk feta and poached egg. I won't go into the hot sauce, pickles and feta, which are riotous players that add heat, brine and funk. But preserved lemon! What? The flavor -- sour, bitter, salty -- makes this breakfast one for the books. The sorrel adds an apologetic weedy note (not marijuana...the other type of weed, jeez). 

The avocado toast (top) presently features JJ's avocados, hot pickled carrots, green garlic creme fraiche, wood sorrel, and house za'atar. This is served all day (as opposed to the breakfast items, which are only available 'til the leisurely hour of 4pm).  I'd venture to say this is the oddest avocado toast I've ever had, and that's a good thing...like I've been listening to flutes and clarinets -- sweet, mellow, easy -- and finally someone plays the oboe -- sharp, strange, memorable.  

Here's the "Famous Damus", soft scrambled egg, Surryano ham, chives, ciabatta. We liked this one, though it's definitely more familiar in flavor than our other dishes. 

Sqirl also serves lovely drinks and pastries. The almond milk is made in-house (so no worrying about weird emulsifiers). 

This has become our dream wedding cake flavor combo: chocolate with blood orange. The best part? The crackled cacao nib crust. 

Sqirl historians will know that it actually started as a jam business. If we went a third time, I'd surely get the burnt brioche with almond hazelnut butter and jam. Instead, I have two jars at home: the rather romantic-sounding Moro Blood Orange and Tonga Vanilla Marmalade and Rhubarb and Meiwa Kumquat Jam. I can't wait to try them in yogurt, on ice cream, or let's be real, by the spoonful. 

Word to the wise -- jams are considered liquid and cannot be taken in carry-on luggage! I learned this the hard way. The TSA woman at the Long Beach airport saw me go from okay to grief-stricken in record time. Don't do that. 

Asian Chicken Slaw

I always want things like this, but they're frustratingly hard to find. What is "this"?

"This" is a great post-workout meal -- Fresh and crunchy and satisfying. "Hearty" salads tend to have cream or cheese, which slam the gut. The key is enough protein (here, chicken breast), the body of an aromatic oil (sesame oil in this case), and some support from some nuts (almonds and black sesame seeds, above). See, no sluggishness!

"This" is not a flimsy salad --I'll take slaw over salad any day. A great salad is a revelation -- gossamer lettuce as silken as rose petals, dressing of elegance and subtlety, toppings that play nice while still adding textural, visual, and flavor contrast.  But salads are hard to balance because the leaves are so delicate. Slaws are easy. Make it with cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, carrots -- anything with bite. They'll withstand anything you throw its way.

"This" is nostalgic -- Remember the "Oriental Chicken Salad"? Oh, it was a confusing piece of work -- canned mandarin oranges, fried chow mein noodles, and a honey mustard mayo-based dressing made "Asian" with rice vinegar and sesame oil. I loved this salad, but it could bear to be less gross.

RECIPE: Slice Napa cabbage and salt generously. Saute chicken in olive oil and let rest once done. Dice carrots, red bell pepper, and scallions and add to cabbage. Add chicken, then soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Before serving, toss with sliced almonds and sesame seeds.

Turkey Chili (with coffee & cocoa)

Great chili has soul. You might come across chili recipes that boast extreme prep times, like some miracle 30-minute workout. These recipes are roll calls of cans and ready-made mixes: Goya, Ro-Tel, McCormick. The flavors are shallow, merely the sum of their parts and nothing more.

You can't get soul in 30 minutes. You can, however, get soul in an hour and a half and with two guest stars -- coffee and chocolate.

I've made the mistake of thinking that meat and beans were enough. They aren't. I've tried to compensate with corn and chorizo and sweet potatoes. Not quite. It's rather hard to make the leap from slurry to stew.

Coffee and cocoa powder are miracle workers. Call them the Instagram filter for your lackluster chili. They smooth out the edges, they boost the main players, they blur out the imperfections.

In a perfect world, you'd cook this low and slow. But this recipe is no floozy. She's got enough soul to last you bowl after bowl.

RECIPE: Boil 1 1/2 cups of dried beans and soak for 40 minutes. In a Dutch oven, sauté 1 onion, 2 large carrots, 4 celery stalks, 1 cup of bell peppers (I like a combo of red, yellow and green) and 5 cloves of garlic, all diced. Add 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 2 tablespoons chili powder, 1 tablespoon paprika, 1 teaspoon ground coriander, and 1 tablespoon of salt. When the onion is translucent, add 1 pound of ground turkey meat. Break up the chunks with a wooden spatula and cook for 5 minutes, until some of the turkey is browned. (If you're using a fattier meat, I would cook the meat first so you can cook the veggies in the fat. Ground turkey breast will just dry out if you sauté it too long and is better served by steam and stewing.)

Add one 20 oz can of pureed tomatoes, one 6 oz can of tomato paste, and one 32 oz carton of chicken broth. Add the par-cooked beans and 1 cup of the bean water.

Add one tablespoon of instant coffee (!!) and one tablespoon of unsweetened coca powder. Simmer, partially covered, for 90 minutes or more.