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. 

Book Club Bites: Pomegranate Lemon Bars

Lemon bars were one of the first things I baked -- from a box, of course, and I’ve repressed the exact procedure. Was it curd on top, or some sort of cornstarchy-sludge? Did I make it, or did I squeeze it out of a baggie?

It took me years to figure out that lemon bars aren’t hard to make at all. You probably have all the ingredients right now: flour, sugar, butter, and lemons. But for the best lemon bars, you need a lot of lemons.

I’ve experimented with other flavors: lime, lemon-grapefruit, and now this: a pomegranate lemon bar. I like the berried base that underpins this dessert. Citrus is a top-note flavor, while pomegranate is a mustier, base note player.

Plus, pomegranates are often on my mind so I had to incorporate them into a recipe. There’s a pomegranate on the cover of Food Whore but pomegranates don’t appear in the text of the book. Not once.

So why did I suggest a pomegranate for the cover? Well, they’re juicy, luscious, sexy -- all things I wanted my book to be. Not really in terms of scenes (don’t get your hopes up for back-to-back sex scenes), but more on a sentence level. Sentences can move with a sensual quality.

Also, I summoned some middle school Latin and loved the connection to Persephone and Hades. Do you remember that story? Basically, Hades tricks Persephone into eating a couple pomegranate seeds, sentencing her to a life in the underworld. Because of her love of food, she makes a deal with the devil.

And that… the pomegranate… is basically my book.

RECIPE: (adapted from Ina Garten’s lemon bar recipe)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bring 1 cup of pomegranate juice to a simmer and reduce on low for ten minutes. Turn off heat and let cool.

In an electric mixer, cream 2 sticks of room-temperature butter and ½ cup of granulated sugar until fluffy, about 3 minutes. In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups of flour and ⅛ teaspoon of kosher salt. Slowly add to the mixer on low until just incorporated. Remove dough and roll into a ball on a well-floured surface. Press onto a 9” x 13” baking sheet, then chill for 15 minutes.  

Poke holes into the dough with a fork (so it doesn’t bubble up), then bake for 15-20 minutes until very lightly browned (keep in mind that it will get baked again with the curd, so no need to go all the way now).

For the filling, whisk 6 extra-large room temperature eggs, 3 cups of granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon zest, ¾ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, ¼ cup of the reduced pomegranate juice, and 1 cup of flour. Pour over the crust, then bake for 35-40 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.
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Cut into squares (or triangles if that’s your fancy). In a food processor, powder ⅓ cup of dehydrated strawberries. Sprinkle on top with powdered sugar.

Papaya Lime Sorbet

Papaya and lime. They're more than nice pairings... they complete each other. 

Papaya is a subtle, low-acid fruit. It's floral, but not as insistent as lychee. It's tropical, but not as overt as mango. And so lime strengthens its lines, like a few swipes of makeup that enhances the beauty that's already there. 

RECIPE: 

Freeze 1 1/2 cups of papaya and half a banana (or, if you're like me, just keep a bunch of frozen fruit in the freezer for sorbet and smoothies). Blend in a Vitamix with one glug of almond milk, 1 teaspoon of honey and the juice of 1 lime. If the mixture isn't blending, add more almond milk.

Slow Cooker Bang Bang Chicken with Lime, Lemongrass & Chilis

This is *not* the bang bang sauce from Cheesecake Factory -- a calorie-bomb of coconut curry and peanut sauce (I mean, it probably tastes amazing). 

This is the Laotian Bang Bang sauce -- a funky, fiery, sweet/tangy/spicy mix. Ie: a slow cooker friend.  

In my experience, the best slow cooker recipes are deeply, aggressively flavored (see also this miso ginger garlic chicken). Slow cookers get a bad reputation because they remind people of dull stewy mush. 

But that's why you fight against the murky "brown" flavor with brightness. In Laotian cuisine, bang bang is typically eaten with sticky rice (the way fries are eaten with ketchup). The same idea applies here: you want to match a tender, blank-slate food (slow-cooked chicken, sticky rice), with something that awakens the palate. Now you have the best of both worlds -- something soft and pillowy with something sharp and vibrant. 

My preparation includes two ingredients that aren't in classic bang bang sauce: gochujang and black bean sauce. I did this because slow-cooker sauces need to be thick. They'll get watered down a lot as the chicken cooks (such are modern chickens, very watery). Both sauces are thick, fermented and funky, and serve as the foundation for the more ephemeral top notes of this dish (ginger, lime, etc). 

So, to review: Laotian bang bang: wakes you up. Cheesecake Factory bang bag: knock you out. 

RECIPE: 
Skin an entire whole chicken (I do this because the fat doesn't have anywhere to go in a slow cooker. Since the slow-cooker is a pro at keeping meat tender, don't worry about going skinless!). 

In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons gochujang, 2 tablespoons of black bean sauce, 1 teaspoon chopped chili peppers (Thai chilis, piri-piri, whatever you have), 5 cloves of chopped garlic, 2 tablespoons chopped ginger, 1 tablespoon chili oil, 1 chopped lemongrass stalk (or 1/2 teaspoon of dried lemongrass), 1 tablespoon palm sugar, 1 teaspoon fish sauce, 1 pinch of dried ginger, 1 pinch of dried galangal (or just more ginger if you can't get this), 1 pinch of cardamom. Add enough water to mix, but not too much. 

Place chicken in slow cooker and pour sauce over chicken, making sure to get every crevice. Add one diced lime. Cover and cook on low for 7 hours. Serve with sticky rice and Thai basil.