Breakfast Lemon Squares

Lemons are lovely, especially when you pair them with oats and almonds and eggs and call them breakfast. Baked goods (or leftover pancakes) are my favorite things to have for weekday breakfasts since they require zero work first thing in the morning. Fifteen minutes of effort once or twice a week can provide you with hearty, healthy breakfasts that will make you want to get out of bed so you can enjoy them!

Muffins are my go-to standard — they’re endlessly versatile, and you can make a batch of 12 in less time than it would take to go to the store to buy “enriched” stripped-out bagels that will give you an ill-advised sugar rush and then leave you hungry an hour after you’ve eaten them — but this time I decided to revamp an old sugary favorite to come up with a new lightly sweetened and highly nutritious breakfast: the beloved lemon square. Here, almonds, oats, and sorghum have replaced refined flour, and the tartness of the lemon is offset by a touch of honey. You might just want to double the recipe and make a 9″x13″ rather than an 8″x8″!

Breakfast Lemon Squares
Makes an 8″x8″ pan, or double the recipe for a 9″x13″ pan.

1/2 stick butter, preferably from grass-fed cows, melted (Kerrygold is a great choice)
1/2 cup oat flour (be sure to use gluten-free oats if you want a gluten-free breakfast; I run my g-f rolled oats through my coffee grinder to make my own flour)
1/2 cup almond flour (that same coffee grinder sure comes in handy for turning sliced almonds into fresh almond flour)
2 T. powdered sucanat (the coffee grinder strikes again!)
1/2 cup sorghum OR millet OR brown rice flour*, divided
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup honey
Zest of 1 lemon, preferably organic since you’re using the zest
1/4 c. lemon juice (1 organic lemon tends to give you 1/4 cup juice)
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 325F and get out an 8″x8″ glass pan. Melt the butter in a small pot over low heat, then pour into a medium mixing bowl and mix well with the oat and almond flours and the powdered sucanat. Add 1/4 cup sorghum flour and stir until well-blended, using your hands to to mix if you like. (Butter is a great skin moisturizer!) Press into the bottom of the glass pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

While the crust is baking, whisk together the eggs, honey, lemon zest and juice, and the remaining 1/4 cup sorghum flour. When the 20 minutes is up and you pull out the crust, whisk the baking soda into the egg mixture and quickly pour it onto the crust. (The baking soda will start to react with the lemon juice immediately, so you want to wait until the last possible second to complete your topping.)

Put the squares back into the oven and bake for another 25 minutes or until the top is turning a light golden brown and you can see dimples forming on the surface. These lightly sweetened squares make a great breakfast, or serve them with fresh fruit and/or ice cream and a drizzle of honey for dessert.

Enjoy!

* This is a gluten-free flour. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use kamut, spelt, or whole-wheat flour in place of the sorghum.

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins

Now that summer has given way to leaf-strewn fall, the idea of going outside to grill something for dinner has gotten a lot less appealing. So much for mesquite-laced, smoky veggies and meats. (And fruits, too. Ever tried grilled pineapple? Sublime!) Seems like that signature mesquite flavor is only available during the summer months.

…Or maybe it isn’t. It turns out that the same tree that yields mesquite wood for the grill also bears a fruit that can be dried out and ground into flour. Like the smoke given off by the burning mesquite wood, mesquite flour carries a hint of caramel smokiness. It hangs somewhere between sweet and earthy and will probably make you think of campfires. The assertive flavor of mesquite fits best with other assertive flavors: chocolate, peanut, coffee. It’s also one of North America’s indigenous edibles — long before European settlers arrived, Native American tribes were enjoying both the culinary and utilitarian aspects of mesquite trees.

The only downside about mesquite flour is that it’s tricky to find unless you live in Arizona or New Mexico. You can order it online, though, from places like http://www.nutsonline.com/ and http://www.mesquiteflour.com/. And if worst comes to worst and you simply don’t have any way to get your hands on mesquite but still want to make these Peanut Muffins, you can use teff or buckwheat flour instead — those are also nutty, dark, rich flours and pair well with peanut. That plus a little maple syrup drizzled onto the muffins before serving would mimic a little bit of mesquite’s caramel-esque tinge.

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.

1 cup peanut flour OR 1 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup mesquite flour OR 1/2 cup buckwheat flour OR 1/2 cup teff flour*
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re baking gluten-free muffins)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1/2 cup date sugar
1/2 cup palm sugar OR sucanat
1 1/4 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you live in Metro Detroit, you’re lucky — we have Calder’s)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil

Two notes before we begin:

- If you don’t have date sugar and/or you want your muffins to be sweeter, use 1 cup sucanat instead of splitting it with date sugar. (Date sugar is less sweet than sucanat; both are granulated, not liquid.) -

- If you don’t have peanut flour, use the sorghum flour instead, and substitute 1/4 cup peanut butter for one of the eggs. Having 1 egg + 1/4 cup peanut butter will give you plenty of peanut flavor in addition to helping the muffins stick together. -

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, oats, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Stir the liquid portion into the flour mixture until well-blended. (I like to use a whisk, although this technique is much more effective for gluten-free batters than wheat-based ones — the wheat is more difficult to stir because of its gluten-thickened texture.)

Quickly spoon the batter into the waiting cups and bake for 22 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you wish to make wheat-based muffins, substitute spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour for the peanut/sorghum and brown rice flours.

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls

Imagine chocolate crinkle cookies. Now think about Russian teacakes — you know, those cute little balls covered with powdered sugar that are the mainstay of holiday cookie swaps. Then let your mind flit over to oatmeal-raisin cookies. What do you get when you put them all together? Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls. Or, if you prefer, Chocolate, Raisin & Oat Balls. Made with 100% whole-grain and no refined sugar, of course.

I was inspired to come up with this recipe when a friend said that his two favorite cookies were chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin. Seeing as I was completely out of my beloved 85% chocolate bars (a crisis that I’ve since remedied by means of restocking), I went with the chocolate crinkle approach of using cocoa powder instead. And since I happened to have oats and dried cherries on hand, I threw those in as well. Necessity is the mother of culinary invention, too!

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls
Makes about 64 cookies.

1/2 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff flour*
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched/non-alkalized (the baking soda will react better if the cocoa is still in its natural acidic state)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Dash sea salt
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re making gluten-free cookies!)
6 T. butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold and Organic Valley are great choices), softened
3/4 cup to 1 cup sucanat
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1 cup dried cherries OR raisins
1/2 cup cocoa nibs (optional)
Powdered sucanat for dusting/rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 400F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and oats. In another large bowl, cream the softened butter for at least a full minute. Note that if you use butter from grass-fed cows, the butter will soften in about 10 minutes when left at room temperature since the butter naturally contains less saturated fat (which is very stiff when refrigerated). If you use conventional butter, plan on letting the butter sit out in the bowl for at least an hour to soften.

Gradually add sucanat to butter, creaming as you go. If you want not-so-sweet cookies, go with 3/4 sucanat; if you want cookies that approach a more traditional sweetness, use 1 cup. (I used 3/4 cup.) Beat in vanilla and eggs, then beat in flour mixture. If you are using wheat-based flours, stir in the flour rather than using an electric mixer. Either way, finish by stirring in the dried cherries and nibs.

Refrigerate the dough for 20 to 30 minutes to get it hard enough to roll into balls without the dough unduly sticking to your hands. Shape into balls 1″ across and place on parchment-covered sheets. Bake for 11 minutes. You’ll need to do two batches, so while the first one is baking, go ahead and shape the second half into balls and put them on a waiting plate. When the first batch is done, let the sheets cool for about 5 minutes or until you can comfortably touch them, then reload and rebake.

If you’d like to roll the cookies in powdered sucanat as a finishing touch, run some standard sucanat through a spice or coffee grinder while the first batch of cookies is baking. Put the powdered sucanat in a small paper bag. Drop the fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies into the bag 4 at a time, scrunch the bag closed, and gently upend the bag so that the cookies roll around inside and become coated with sucanat. Remove cookies and repeat with the remainder.

Let cool completely before storing the cookies in an airtight container. Warm cookies can be eaten immediately, of course.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d like to make a wheat-based version of this recipe, use equivalent amounts of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flours instead.

Pancakes with Cocoa Nibs & Oats

Chocolate chips are great, but a few words of advice for my fellow chocolate purists out there: cocoa nibs are even better. The nibs are straight-up, unsweetened cocoa beans that have been chopped into rough…well…nibs. You know how steel-cut oats are whole oats chopped a few times across with steel blades? They wind up being chunky and irregular and still looking a lot like they did originally. Cocoa nibs are pretty much the same idea.

Nibs can be hard to find, though. I generally poke about specialty online groceries to see who has what. But don’t fret — if you can’t find any nibs, you can revert to chocolate chips. Better yet, you can break up your favorite chocolate bar into shards and make your own chips. (I pound the heck outta my Lindt 85% dark bars whenever I want chips.) Heck, even if you leave out the cocoa component entirely from these pancakes, they’ll still be tasty!

Pancakes with Cocoa Nibs & Oats (or Chocolate Shards)
Makes about 20 pancakes

1 1/4 cups teff OR sorghum flour*
3/4 cup millet flour*
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats, designated gluten-free if you’re making a gluten-free batch of pancakes
1/2 cup cocoa nibs or chocolate shards/chips
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 T. baking powder
Pinch of sea salt
1 1/2 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 T. maple syrup
3 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1 tsp. vanilla

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flours, oats, nibs, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center and add remaining ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients together in the well you’ve created until the ingredients are well-blended, then whisk outwards to pull in the dry ingredients. Keep whisking until blended.

Heat a pat of butter or ghee on a large nonstick griddle or skillet over medium heat until butter has melted. Add pancake batter in 1/4 cupfuls and cook for 3 minutes or until little bubbles appear and then burst on the top and the bottoms are golden brown. Flip the cakes and continue to cook for another minute or two until that side is golden brown, too. Let the cooked cakes rest on a wire rack while you continue making the rest of the batch.

You’ll probably have to add a pat of butter/ghee between each batch of cakes. My griddle pan can accommodate 4 cakes at a time, so I had 5 batches total. You might also have to reduce the heat a little as you cook along since the pan will keep getting hotter and hotter — by batch #3, I’m usually down to medium-low heat.

Serve cakes drizzled with additional maple syrup and some nut oil if you have any. I particularly like unrefined hazelnut and pecan oils with these chocolatey cakes. Leftover cakes can be kept in the fridge for 5 days.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use equivalent amounts of whole-wheat, kamut, and/or spelt flours.

Mulberry Pie

Soon, July will have come to an end, and with it, the mulberries will, too.  That’s a shame — mulberries are probably the easiest and most satisfying wild food to forage. If you don’t have a mulberry tree in your backyard, odds are you know someone who does. Or you’ve probably walked underneath one and didn’t realize that the smushy dark stuff lying on the pavement underneath it was actually a giant clue that there was an edible treasure hanging over your head. (Always look up! Just not with your mouth open.) As delicious as they are, though, mulberries don’t travel well, so you won’t find them in markets. Mulberry rule #1: eat them within a few hours of picking them. Or make a pie with them.

If you can’t find free mulberries hanging around, you can substitute any kind of smallish berry: raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries. (Strawberries would be too big and watery.) Any of these would pair well with the oat-and-nut crust.

Mulberry Pie (or Raspberry or Blackberry or Blueberry Pie)

For the crust:
3/4 cup ground gluten-free oats (either steel-cut or rolled) or a heaping 2/3 cup pre-ground gluten-free oat flour*
1/2 cup ground almonds*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1 cup sorghum flour*
1 tsp. sea salt
1 stick chilled butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold is a great choice)
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens
1/3 cup cold water
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

For the filling:
About 6 cups berries
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup brown rice flour*
2 tsp. cinnamon (or a total of 2 tsp. of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and/or ginger)

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a 9″ glass pie pan with a bit of the butter and set aside. Also make sure you have a rolling pin and some plastic wrap handy.

Whisk together oats, almonds, flours, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Use a knife to cut the butter into chunks before plopping it into the flour mixture, then cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or two knives, continuing to work the butter into the flour until your mixture looks like coarse crumbs. (If you try to do this with not-cold butter, the butter will smush and melt rather than cut cleanly into crumbs. Not good.) Make a well in the center of the mixture and add the egg, water, and vinegar to the center. Whisk them together, then whisk in widening circles to mix everything. Finish by gently pressing the dough together with your hands, kneading it in the bowl until you have a smooth and slightly wet dough. If the dough is too wet and is coming apart, add a little more flour and mix again.

Split the dough in half. Refrigerate one half and press the other into your greased pan, pressing in the center and outwards to the edges until the dough covers the bottom and most of the sides. The dough should be uniformly thick, so don’t press too hard in any one area; if a tear develops, pinch off a overly thick part and press it into the tear/thin part.

In another large bowl, gently toss the berries with the remaining ingredients. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it between two sheets of plastic wrap. Gently roll out the dough, pressing evenly on the rolling pin to make a layer that’s evenly thick.

Spoon the filling into the crusted pan. Peel the top piece of plastic wrap off of the just-rolled dough and invert the dough over the filled pie pan before removing the other piece of wrap. Pinch the edges of the two crusts together. Again, if a tear develops, snitch a patch-it piece of dough from a spot that’s too bulky and gently press it into the tear.

Use the tip of a sharp knife to carve several little holes into the top of the crust to allow steam to escape while the pie is baking. Be creative! You can cut fanciful shapes if you like, or you can stick with simple slashes. Or carve your initials into the top of the pie. Historically, bakers had distinctive marks they would cut or stamp into their baked goods as a signature of sorts.

Bake for 1 hour, then check on the pie’s progress. It may take up to 1 hour and 20 minutes to get a nicely browned crust, but better to check early and often than burn your beautiful pie. Let cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting into the pie.

Note: this is not a sweet pie — it’s an opportunity to showcase the flavor of the berries rather than the sweetener. If you’d prefer a sweeter pie, use 1/2 cup date sugar and 1/2 cup sorghum flour rather than 1 full cup sorghum flour. Or you can serve the pie with a splash of maple syrup or a scoop of ice cream. I like to have it for breakfast just the way it is or with a little bit of maple or date sugar on top.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours/ingredients. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flour in place of the brown rice and sorghum flours. You can use standard oats if you aren’t making a gluten-free pie (standard oats are grown/processed with gluten-containing grains and flours; gluten-free oats are kept separate). I would keep the almonds and oats, though, since they both pair well with the fruit and they add flavor and nutrition to the pie.

Goat Yogurt & Almond Muffins

As promised in yesterday’s post, I’m back with more ways to use goat’s-milk yogurt!  This time, I paired goat with oat in the form of muffins.  And since I used honey instead of sugar, these muffins are very moist and slightly crunchy on top — honey caramelizes more readily than sugar does, so baked goods made with honey get more golden brown on top.  (When I say “readily,” I mean at a lower temperature.  Honey-sweetened muffins brown more quickly at 400F or even 350F than sugar-sweetened muffins do.  So will honey-sweetened cookies, quick breads, scones…you get the picture.)  Meanwhile, the oats lend the interior a slight chewiness.

And you know what the best part is?  When you’re talking muffins made with high-quality ingredients — whole-grain flours, eggs from pastured hens, probiotic dairy products, natural sweeteners, unrefined fats, nuts, seeds, etc. — you’re talking a satisfying, delicious, healthy breakfast.  Spend 30 minutes making muffins on Sunday, and you’ll have an entire week’s worth of grab-and-go breakfasts.  The advent of muffin cups has made muffin-making so darned simple that there is no excuse not to make them, really.  I guarantee that you can make your own muffins in less time than it would take to go to the store and find a box of decidedly-less-healthy, muffin-like edible items.

Goat Yogurt & Almond Muffins

These are gluten-free muffins, but you can make wheat-based muffins by substituting whole-wheat flour (or spelt or kamut flour) for all or part of the gluten-free flours.

Dry ingredients
1/2 cup almond flour (I make fresh flour by briefly grinding sliced almonds in my coffee grinder — it’s easier, cheaper, and tastier than buying almond flour)*
1/2 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup millet flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup rolled oats (make sure they’re gluten-free oats if you’re making g-f muffins)
1/4 cup sliced almonds
Dash of sea salt

Wet ingredients
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup goat’s-milk yogurt OR 1 cup standard buttermilk
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F and line a muffin tin with muffin cups. I find that I almost always wind up with more than a dozen muffins, so I usually use two trays and 16 muffin cups.

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk wet ingredients together in another mixing bowl, then stir them into the dry mixture. If you’re using wheat-based flours, just stir until barely blended; if you’re using gluten-free flours, you can stir all you like and you won’t ruin the muffins by making them too tough. (Overdeveloping gluten makes for tough baked goods, but g-f bakers don’t have to worry about that. Yet another perk of baking g-f.)

Pour batter into tins and bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until muffins are golden-brown and pass the toothpick test.

Enjoy!

* Or use whole-wheat flour, or spelt or kamut flour.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar

I’m always on the prowl for new unrefined sweeteners — not only are they a healthier alternative to heavily processed white sugar, unrefined sweeteners like maple syrup and honey have flavor instead of just being super-sweet.  It’s fun to play with flavor pairings to see which sweetener you like with what.  (I think honey is a natural fit for cornbread and blueberry muffins; maple syrup is delicious with chocolate.  Date sugar is wonderful sprinkled onto fruit and cobblers.)  And since unrefined sweeteners retain more of their complex nutrients than refined sugar does, unrefined sweeteners contain fewer calories per teaspoon.  Once again, taking the quality approach addresses the quantity one.

My latest unrefined sweetener find is palm sugar.  It’s made from the sap of a palm tree in a process that’s much like making maple syrup: tap the tree, collect the sap, and boil it down to a thick liquid.  The difference is that the palm sugar is more of a gritty, thick paste than a pourable syrup.  Some palm sugars — including coconut sugar — are then poured into molds to dry and wind up being sold in blocks.  (Jaggery is an Indian sweetener typically made of palm sap or sugarcane juice and sold in hardened blocks or swirls.  Latin versions are made from sugarcane and are known by various names, including rapadura and piloncillo. They’re often sold as cones.)

Despite palm sugar having less than a quarter of the calories of white sugar (10 per tablespoon instead of 45), palm sugar is surprisingly sweet!  It also has a very faint caramel flavor.  So far, I’ve stirred it into hot chocolate and made a sweetened granola with it, and I’ve really enjoyed the results.  You could also use it in baked goods that work well with liquid sweeteners, like cakes and muffins and quick breads.  (Cookies would be too thin and would spread out too much if you used a liquid sweetener in them — I use sucanat and date sugar for my cookies.)  I found palm sugar at Whole Foods, but you can probably find it at other natural-foods-oriented groceries as well.  And since palm sugar is often used in Thai cookery and other southeastern Asian cuisines, Asian grocery stores tend to stock it.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar
You can use any combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, grains, or other trail-mix-friendly ingredients in your granola. If you use salted roasted nuts, you don’t need to add any sea salt to the recipe, but if you use unsalted nuts, you might want to sprinkle in some sea salt to taste.

2/3 cups roasted pistachios
1/3 cup roasted peanuts
3/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 cups unsweetened puffed brown rice OR puffed millet
1 1/4 cups rolled oats (make sure to get gluten-free oats if you’d like gluten-free granola)
2 T. roasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup cocoa nibs, optional
Pinch of sea salt, optional

3/4 cup palm sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients except for the final three together in a large bowl. Gently heat the palm sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in a small pot on the stove. It should only take a minute or two of stirring over the low heat to get the palm sugar to fully liquefy.

Drizzle palm sugar over the granola mix and stir well with a wooden spoon. Spread the mixture out on an ungreased baking sheet to dry, then store in an airtight container when cool. (If you’re going to keep it for more than three or four days, refrigerate it.) You can eat the granola as it is for a snack or for breakfast, or you can pour it into a bowl and add your choice of milk to make a traditional bowl of cereal.

Enjoy!

Steel-Cut Oats & Rhubarb Compote

With summer vacations over and kids heading back to school, breakfast time for most people probably just got a lot more hectic.  But don’t worry — boxes of sugary pseudo-cereal aren’t the only option.  I say “pseudo-cereal” because the original definition implied the whole cereal grain, not the modern stripped-out, starch-only version.  Happily,  though, we’re seeing more and more whole grains on our grocery store shelves, all and any of which can be cooked ahead of time, refrigerated for up to a week, and treated as an out-of-the-box cereal.  The only difference is that you’ll spoon your cereal into a bowl instead of pouring it.

Oats in particular make a nice breakfast.  They’re sold in many different forms: groats, steel-cut, old-fashioned rolled, quick-cooking rolled, and instant.  Oats have also been the breakfast, lunch, and dinner choice of millions of Scots for millennia.  The British have been making oat bread since the late nineteenth century and oat-based beers long before that.  Oats are even popular outside of northwestern Europe — when I was living in Costa Rica, one of my favorite drinks was called “aveno” and was made with ground oats, water, cinnamon, and honey.  (The first time my host mother gave me a glass of aveno, suddenly the brand name of a certain anti-itch skin lotion made sense.)  But you’ll find more oats in northwestern European cuisines since oats tolerate chilly, wet weather more graciously than most other crops do.

A Quick Primer on Oats

Gluten-Free oats

You may have noticed “gluten-free” oats hitting stores lately.  That’s because while oats themselves do not contain exactly the kind of gluten that’s so predominant in wheat, oats are usually grown in fields with/alongside wheat, processed in wheat-processing facilities, and included in foods that also feature wheat.  Gluten-free oats are kept strictly separate from wheat and are considered safe for most celiacs/gluten-sensitive people to eat.  If you’re gluten-intolerant but want to enjoy oats, make sure you find gluten-free oats.  Bob’s Red Mill has a full line of gluten-free oats.

Groats

“Groats” and “berries” both refer to whole grains — you’ll see oat and buckwheat groats and wheat and rye berries.  The only difference between the two terms is that “groats” are harder to separate from the plant stalks than “berries” are, no matter what kind of whole grain kernels we’re talking about.  Oat groats are therefore simply whole, uncut oats.  These will need to be cooked for at least 40 minutes to soften them.  Once they’re cooked, they retain a delightful crunch and chewiness and are fantastic as a breakfast cereal.

Steel-cut oats (a.k.a. Irish or Scottish breakfast oats)

Each of these oat groats has been cut through two or three times with steel blades, making each piece smaller than the original groat and slightly faster to cook.  Depending on how chewy you like your oats to be, these could use 20 to 30 minutes of simmering.  I like them just as well as groats.

Old-fashioned rolled oats

The distinctive round-with-a-line-through-the-middle appearance of these oats is testament to what they are: groats that have been rolled flat.  The line through the middle comes from the original line on the groat where the kernel wraps around itself and meets, forming a seam.  Rolled oats need half the cooking time (or less) than their steel-cut cousins.

Quick-cooking rolled oats

These oats are like parboiled rice in the sense that they’ve been partially pre-cooked, thus speeding up their final cooking time.  I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve used these — I prefer steel-cut oats for their chewiness and higher nutritional content — but if memory serves correctly, quick-cooking rolled oats live up to their name by cooking in about 5 minutes flat.

Instant oats

Three minutes, and you’re done…because instant oats have been pre-cooked and ground to make them go from box to ready in an instant.  The big problems with these is that they usually come in packets — coated with sweeteners and chemicals — and that they have nowhere near the nutritional profile of the more-whole oats, like steel-cut and even old-fashioned rolled.  Most instant oats are just as sugary and nutritionally defunct as boxed cereals.

Last words on oats

The biggest thing to remember with oats is that the more whole they are, the more nutrition they contain.  And seeing as making one pot of groats or steel-cut oats per week will actually take less time and be less of a hassle than continually cooking old-fashioned or even quick-cooking rolled oats…plus seeing as oats expand to about four times their raw size when cooked (1/4 cup raw groats or steel-cut oats = 1 cup cooked, more or less), making a pot of oats for the week is MUCH, MUCH less expensive than buying boxed cereals.  And MUCH, MUCH more healthy.

Top your cooked oat cereal with milk (dairy, coconut, nut, grain, whatever you like), yogurt, or a pat of melted butter; swirl it with naturally sweetened jams, chutneys, or compotes; add some maple syrup or honey; stir in nuts, dried fruit, even cocoa nibs.  One pot of pre-cooked oats can become a different cereal every day of the week.

Enjoy!

Cherry-Oat Custard

Top-notch eggs (i.e., eggs from hens who peck about in the dirt and eat bugs) are our best source of protein in terms of bioavailability and sustainability, plus they’re incredibly versatile from a culinary point of view.  The only caveat is that you can easily overcook them and therefore make them tougher than you’d like — I’m sure all of us have experienced Rubbery Scrambled Egg Syndrome at some point.  That’s the flip side of having so much protein in one little shell!  (The protein, by the way, resides in the egg whites, which is why the whites “cook” so much more quickly than the yolks.  I say “cook” because it’s really more of a coagulation process, but we won’t get overly technical about it.  For those who are interested in culinary chemistry, check out The Curious Cook by Harold McGee.)

Custards fall into the it-can-be-tricky category because they contain a high ratio of eggs to flour/sugar.  The good news, though, is that you can add a decent amount of flour to a custard — thereby making it less likely to overcook — and still have a nice custardy texture.  This recipe uses freshly-ground oat and Brazil nut flours, although you could just as easily use store-bought oat and almond/hazelnut flour.  The idea is to pair the cherries with oats and nuts in a custardy kind of way.

Cherry-Oat Custard

1/2 stick butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
3/4 cup buttermilk (do NOT substitute regular milk!)*
1/3 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
1 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 cup oat flour, store-bought or freshly-ground (you can grind your own steel-cut oats in a coffee grinder)
1/4 cup Brazil nut flour OR almond flour OR hazelnut flour, store-bought or freshly-ground (if the nuts are whole, chop them coarsely and then grind them in a coffee grinder)
1/4 tsp. sea salt
3/4 tsp. baking powder
2 cups chopped pitted cherries, fresh or frozen
Juice from one lemon

Place the butter in a 9″ glass pie pan and then place the pan in the oven. Preheat to 375 degrees F. Watch for butter to melt — it should be melted well before the oven is fully heated. (You’ll probably start to hear the butter hissing as it melts and spreads across the hot bottom surface of the pan.) Remove pan and melted butter from oven and continue with the preheating process.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the melted butter, the buttermilk, the maple syrup, the vanilla, and the eggs. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flours, the sea salt, and the baking powder.

Sprinkle the chopped cherries across the bottom of the pie pan. Quickly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ones, then whisk in the lemon juice. Pour batter over cherries and bake for 20 minutes or until the top is slightly puffed and golden brown. Serve as is or with a side of Greek yogurt. (The latter serving suggestion makes a great breakfast!)

Enjoy!

* The reason you need to use buttermilk and NOT regular milk is that the buttermilk is acidic while standard milk is alkaline. The anthocyanin pigments in the cherries (and in all dark purplish and reddish produce) will turn greenish-blue in an alkaline environment. That means that you need the acidity of the buttermilk and the lemon juice to ensure that your cherries retain their beautiful cherry color.  If you’ve made blueberry muffins in the past and wound up with greenish circles surrounding the blueberries, that’s because you had an alkaline batter.  But the good news is that berries/cherries-turned-green still taste great!

Vegetable Medley Stew

Now that summer is on the way, I’m thinking about gardening and veggies and mounds of fresh produce.  It’s still a little bit chilly out, though, so I’m also still enjoying warm dishes hot off the stove.

In keeping with the winter-to-spring transition, this Vegetable Medley Stew is a cross-seasonal dish — it’s warm and hearty like a winter stew, but is chock-full of veggies and could easily be lightened into a peak-of-summer soup by adding more broth and fewer grains.  Likewise, you could season the stew/soup with whatever fresh herbs you have on hand rather than using dried sage (although the sage imparts a subtle lemony tang).  And with the addition of grains and lentils, the stew is both fragrant and satisfying…and will be for several days, because the flavors will deepen as the soup sits in the fridge.  Just add more broth when reheating if the veggies and grains have absorbed too much liquid for your taste.

Vegetable Medley Stew
Serves at least 4 as a main course.

1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
32 oz. vegetable stock (or chicken or beef, preferably from pastured animals)
15 oz. diced tomatoes
1 zucchini (or yellow squash), chopped
1/2 cup dried lentils
1/2 cup steel-cut oats (choose gluten-free oats if you want this to be a gluten-free dish)
1 tsp. dried sage
Sea salt and freshly-cracked pepper to taste
1 cup curly spinach, coarsely chopped

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, sautée onion and carrot in a pat of ghee or butter for about 5 minutes or until onion is soft and translucent. Stir in stock, scraping the bottom of the pan to deglaze it and bring those caramelized flavors into the liquid. Stir in tomatoes, zucchini, lentil, oats, and sage. Simmer for 30 minutes or until oats and lentils are tender. If it looks like the stew is getting too thick for your taste and you’d prefer a lighter soup, add another cup or two of stock (or water).

Season stew with salt and pepper to taste, then quickly stir in spinach. Take pot off heat and let sit for 3 minutes to soften the spinach. (The stew will still be hot enough to “cook” it.)

Serve hot, garnishing each bowl with a spoonful of a creamy cheese such as fresh mozzarella or soft goat cheese if you’d like.

Enjoy!

Scottish Winter Stew

Americans eat oats for breakfast and in the occasional cookie.  Scots eat them for breakfast, too…and for lunch and dinner and everything in between.  They eat them in scones and stews and porridges and even with fish.  And why not?  Not only are oats one of the most nutrient-rich grains on the planet, they have a wonderful habit of transforming watery soups into thick, satisfying stews.  (Steel-cut oats or whole oats, that is — the rolled variety has usually had its outer bran removed, and much of that thickening power lies in the bran.)

Steel-cut oats are pretty easy to find these days; you might even come across gluten-free oats, which have been grown and processed in their own fields and factories rather than being grown and processed alongside wheat.  Given the plenitude and reasonable cost of oats — not to mention their flavor and versatility — we could take some valuable lessons from the Scots!  Besides, cold winter days seem a lot less colder if you have a pot of hot stew simmering on the stove. Roasting the vegetables is optional, but again, why not drive off the chill of winter with some warm, aromatic roasting? Slow-roasted vegetables will also add a deeper, more umami-rich flavor to your stew.

Scottish Winter Stew

4 stalks celery, cut into 2″-long pieces (do not cut down the centers of the stalks as this would make the pieces too small for roasting)*
1 large onion, cut into thick rounds*
4 carrots, cut into 2″-long pieces (only split very wide chunks in half; leave the tips intact)*
1 knob celeriac/celery root, cut into 1″ cubes (optional)*

In a glass pan (or several pans), toss veggies with peanut oil, sea salt, and freshly-cracked pepper. Roast at 375 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until veggies are a golden brown, stirring at 15-minute intervals.

While veggies are roasting, get the soup going:

3 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
8 oz. shiitake or button mushrooms, sliced
1 large tomato, chopped
4 c. chicken broth, preferably from free-range chickens
2 tsp. (combined) of any or all of these spices: thyme, winter savory, sage
Roasted vegetables (see above)
1/2 cup uncooked steel-cut oats

In a large soup pot, sautée garlic in butter or ghee on medium-low heat for about 2 minutes or until garlic is softened and fragrant. Add mushrooms and tomato and continue to cook, stirring often, for about 5 more minutes. Add chicken broth, spices, and roasted vegetables.** Increase heat to high and wait for the soup to barely come to a boil; when it does, notch the heat back down to medium-low and let it simmer for at least 10 minutes.  (This can be your holding point if you’re making the stew ahead of time — just let it quietly simmer for up to an hour.  You may need to add another cup of broth or water to the stew before adding the oats.)

When you’re about 20 minutes away from wanting to serve the stew, add the oats and let it simmer for another 15-20 minutes or until the oats are cooked through to your satisfaction. (I prefer mine to remain a bit toothsome.) Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

* If you’re sautéeing these veggies rather than roasting them, cut them into smaller pieces so that they will cook through when you pan-fry them.

** Also note that you can make use of any roasted veggie for this recipe: leeks, mushrooms, red peppers, corn, green beans…whatever you like and/or happen to have on hand. (A great way to use up leftover roasted veggies!)

Groats, Eggs & Maple Syrup

People are usually stunned when I say that I don’t have any cereal in my house, but there are so many great (read:  healthier) options out there!  From peanut-butter-banana-yogurt smoothies to toasted zucchini bread to scrambled omelettes, there are countless quick ways to prepare a tasty breakfast.  Some–like pumpkin bread or lemon-coconut muffins–can be kept for a week, so with a bit of forethought, your breakfast can be waiting for you when you wake up.  Others–like the groat-and-egg dish pictured above–can be mostly made in advance and only require about 2 minutes of prep time when you’re stumbling bleary-eyed around your kitchen.  (Check out this post to find out how to make your own granola.)  Even if making breakfast takes 10 minutes, it’s worth it to set the alarm back 10 minutes to give yourself time–the aisle in the grocery store with the most processed, sugary, unhealthy food is the cereal aisle.  It’s best to just stay out of it.  (And if you’re really desperate, polish off last night’s leftovers for breakfast!  It’s almost certain they’ll get your day off to a better start than will the contents of the heavily-refined, nutritionally-defunct boxes lurking in the center of the grocery store.)

[Note: groats are simply whole, unrolled oats--they look a little bit like barley. You'll probably find them next to the cereal grains, although they might also be placed with the wheat flours, millet, spelt, and other baking staples.]

Groats, Eggs, & Maple Syrup

For best results, soak groats all day or overnight in a bath of water mixed with a spoonful or two of yogurt. (Soaking whole grains increases their nutrient value; soaking them in an acidic medium like yogurt makes it even easier for your body to maximize what they offer.) If you’d prefer a gluten-free breakfast, millet or quinoa are nice substitutions. (Although oats don’t contain gluten, they’re usually processed in factories that process wheat and other gluten-containing grains, so oats are best avoided by those sensitive to gluten.)  After they’ve soaked for about 8 hours, dump the groats and their bath into a pot. Add enough water to cover the groats and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Cover.

Note: being whole grains, even soaked groats require about 30 minutes of simmering to bring them to their required tenderness. You might want to soak and simmer a big batch of them so that you’ll have quick and easy leftovers. I soak and cook mine the day before I want to use them for breakfast so that they’re ready to go. (Test them at the 30-minute mark to see how tender/chewy they’ve gotten; if necessary, cook for another 5-10 minutes.)

Mix cooked groats with one or two raw eggs and sauteé over medium heat for a minute or two or until eggs are done to your liking. Drizzle with maple syrup and serve hot.

Enjoy!

The good news is, it’s very simple to make your own cereal. It consists of a mix of grains, nuts, seeds, and fruit. You can add spices and natural sweeteners (honey, agave, maple syrup) as you see fit. Here’s a basic recipe to try:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Mix together in a bowl:

3 cups of grains (any combination of quick oats, rolled barley, or wheat flakes)
1/2 to 1 cup of seeds (any combination of sunflower, sesame, pumpkin)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 to 1 cup of nuts (any combination of pecans, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, cashews)
1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup to 1/2 cup of honey or maple syrup
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (optional)
Pinch of sea salt

You may have to mix the ingredients together with your hands. When thoroughly incorporated, spread out in a baking pan that has high enough sides to keep the granola from spilling out. Bake for about 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes with a wooden spoon to prevent granola from burning. Granola will turn golden brown and fragrant. Remove from oven and let cool. If desired, stir in dried fruit such as raisins, dried blueberries, dried apples, dried pineapple…whatever you like.

Experiment with adding a teaspoon of almond or vanilla extract to the mixture before baking to get a different flavor! You can also try shaking on some spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg) before baking or when serving to add flair. Top with Greek yogurt, serve with nut milk (hazelnut is my favorite!), or splash with coconut milk–the choice is yours. The granola mixture will keep in an airtight container for several weeks.

Ceres, I’m sure, would be delighted with your breakfast!