PB&J
I have a confession. It’s awfully silly. For the past couple of years, I’ve been scared – nay petrified - of peanut butter.
I’ll forgive you if you stop reading this moment, aghast at my admission. (But maybe I can lure you back with a recipe for peanut butter fudge popcorn?)
Here’s the scoop. Peanut butter has held the most horrible reputation among health-bloggers for some time, and I read lots of these blogs which adds up to regular exposure. Peanuts – we write and read – are the bottom feeders of the plant world, poised to absorb every horrible soil impurity and pesticide in their path. Allergenic! Dirty! Those smiling little Kraft bears with their red and green bows? Guised killers, placed to lure us into peanut butter’s sticky trap.
Examining the research, I eventually converted to almond butter – which is delicious in its own way, but definitely not peanut butter. And I began to throw dirty glances at the Kraft bears – those murderers! – whenever I found myself anywhere close to breakfast spreads. Joking aside, I knew deep-down that a good-quality peanut butter eaten now and again was not going to kill me.
A couple weeks back, a friend mentioned the delicious PB&J he was having for lunch. Gosh that sounds good, I thought… if only I ate peanut butter… it’s been so long. I daydreamed of raspberry preserves and crunchy peanut spread with a cup of tea. Finally, on Sunday while grocery shopping, I bought some. Stealthily into the cart (lest anyone see my transgression!) I placed a small jar of MaraNatha Organic Salted Crunchy Peanut Butter. Baby steps. PB&J would soon be mine.
And it’s been a delicious tryst, between me and peanut butter. Into my smoothies and spread on bananas and straight from the spoon – the stuff’s delicious. Its ability to make things tasty knows no bounds!
Then, the other night popping popcorn in my housemate’s mom’s 1970s air popper, I had an idea. Popcorn and peanuts – a natural fit. Into a pan went some brown sugar, cinnamon, salt and peanut butter, stirred to a soft caramel. I shook it with the freshly popped kernels and placed them on trays in a low oven to crisp.
Oh my. Sweet, salty, crunchy peanut butter popcorn. It was popcorn crack. What had I started?
Since then, I’ve been perfecting the recipe nightly. Adding nuts here, and a sugar-coating there, a pinch more salt in some batches – and it just keeps improving. It took all my willpower to save a paltry tumbler (the photo at top) for my housemate to try. Even then, I had to portion it out, sit it on his desk, close the door, and run to make a tea so I would forget it. Popcorn that good.
I’m hopeful that by the time I deplete this jar, I’ll be so sick of peanut butter I avoid it for another couple of years. But I’m not holding my breath. And I still need to make that sandwich.
Peanut butter fudge popcorn
(serves two – well, one, unless you have incredible restraint)
10 cups air-popped popcorn
2Tbsp dark brown sugar
1/4tsp fine sea salt
tiniest shake of cinnamon (just a pinch!)
2Tbsp crunchy natural peanut butter
2 tsp brown sugar, reserved for shaking
Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
Pop popcorn using your usual method into a large container that has a lid. You’ll need room to shake the corn, so sometimes two batches works best.
In a small pan over medium-high heat, combine brown sugar, salt and cinnamon with a scant tablespoon of water. When it starts to bubble rapidly, remove from heat and stir in peanut butter. The mixture will look like a thick caramel sauce. Pour over popcorn, pop lid on, and shake vigorously until all the kernels are coated. Open the container and add the 2tsp reserved brown sugar, tossing again to coat.
Spread evenly on two parchment-lined cookie trays and place in the oven to harden, about 8-10 minutes. Remove and let cool and store covered at room temperature.
[bear photo via]
Belly and heart
Someone balked a few days back at my admission that I don’t much care for Rice Krispie Squares. What kind of solemn upbringing did I have, that I find these neat squares of sticky white airy goodness all a bit lacklustre?
My mom made them from time to time in her burgundy plastic bowl, microwaving the butter and marshmallow into a strange-scented congealed heap. She’d add a capful of vanilla and dump in the puffed rice. Stir with her wooden spoon, then smear the mess into a Pyrex dish. Cool. Cut into squares. Stack neatly.
People and recipes are a lot alike. We have our favourites, and what makes one perfect for me might turn you off completely. Some are good, some better, some ho-hum. Now and again, one is so amazing that we cheer in delight and fall off our chairs and triumphantly proclaim that in the history of friends and recipes, none has been better and none will be better, until the very end of time.
Despite good intentions, failures in execution often have more to do with the cook than the ingredients. They’re so subjective, these recipes and friendships. Everything left to temperature and proper salting and distance the ingredients travel. Are today’s tomatoes sweet? Did the pan heat evenly? Have I done enough and been enough for someone whom I love?
Tastes and people change, and what may be the most beautiful dish today becomes another recipe tucked to the back of the mind. As someone who photographs many meals I have a catalogue of past favourites: some long-lived in my repertoire, some fleeting. The entire fall term of my senior year I had a pot of split-pea soup on the stove. I haven’t made it since.
Sometimes, years later, we pick up the phone and call to say hello – but mostly we move on and have new go-tos and standbys and reliable concoctions.
In matters of belly and heart, I figure my steady palate has served me well. When I find things I like, I keep them around. They’re good in a way that I can’t possibly ever let go. People and dishes that offer strange comfort after a dreadful day and reassurance that this friendship, this recipe, this method – it’s failsafe.
So many ways to make Rice Krispie Squares and keep someone’s heart. Lucky enough, we might find a favourite for keeps.
[photo via]
Transition
The air is brisk. Pumpkins start to arrive on grocery shelves and in market stalls. I pull tweed and sweaters from storage, at last. Everything is to love about fall. It’s dismal and rainy, yes – and the hours of sunshine through chilled air are few at best. But maybe it’s the student in me that sees autumn as a fresh slate, purging summer heat to make way for snow and new memories.
I’ve been thinking about transition a lot lately. Seasons encapsulate transition, I think. As much as I get dreamy-eyed about year-long sunshine or living somewhere more temperate, I need the seasons, so reliably ephemeral: summers marked by icy watermelon, fall’s cider, cocoa and chestnuts with the snow, and spring’s first asparagus.
Each season with its new bounty, some small cause for joy.
Come fall, I’m smitten for squash. It’s such a comforting, warming food and I love its versatility. Sweet or savoury, in a soup, roasted, stirred into oatmeal – it’s comforting and tastes like the season. And there’s something pleasantly humble about squashes: knobbly and imperfect, economical, best prepared simply.
When we recently gathered to celebrate my dear friend and a soon-to-be bride, I knew I’d bring something squash-filled along. And with Thanksgiving next weekend, pumpkin is everywhere. Tiny roasting ones, even tinier ones to display, and whole shelves lined with the pureed kind in cans … some tucked into my cart to share.
A botched streetcar ride, torrential downpour, subway interchange and short walk later, my pumpkin spice pastries arrived to the party miraculously intact, if a few minutes late. Imagine pumpkin pie rolled into a neat bundle of phyllo pastry: slightly spiced, crinkly under tooth, just sweet from brown sugar.
A dessert, I’d say, fit for transition.
Pumpkin spice pastries
(makes 10 large pieces)
A note on phyllo
Phyllo is one of those falsely intimidating doughs. But it’s actually very simple to work with. A few tips for using it successfully:
1) Cover it well with a damp dish towel as you work. This keeps it pliant and prevents cracking.
2) It’s forgiving! My Yia-Yia taught me how easy it is to patch pieces together and just keep folding. Once it’s baked, no one is the wiser that dough surgery was performed.
3) Brush the pastry with enough fat, be it butter or a neutral oil. This keeps it supple and flaky as it bakes.
A note on canned pumpkin
Don’t feel you have to laboriously roast, peel and puree pumpkin for a good filling. Pumpkins are sometimes unreliable with bitter flesh. Canned is usually good quality (I like E.D. Smith or Whole Foods’ 365 house brand). Look for 100% pureed pumpkin, and not varieties that have been mixed with other squash, and don’t mistake pure pumpkin for pre-sweetened pie filling.
Ingredients
2c pureed pumpkin
3/4c brown sugar
<2tsp pumpkin pie spice (mine is a combination of ground clove, ginger cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice)
1/4tsp fine sea salt
2 eggs, beaten
10 pieces phyllo pastry
1/4c melted butter (salted is okay)
additional cinnamon and brown sugar to sprinkle
1 cookie sheet, parchment paper, pastry brush
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
In a bowl, combine pumpkin, brown sugar, spices and salt. Gently incorporate the eggs. Cover and chill in fridge while you prepare your workstation for folding.
Melt the butter over low heat. Ensure your work-surface is very clean. Remove the phyllo from its packaging and unfold, covering with a damp dish towel. In a line, set the butter, pastry brush, cinnamon and a small bowl of brown sugar.
Remove the pumpkin mixture from the fridge. It will seem runny, but not to worry – it will set up nicely to a custard-like consistency once baked.
Brush one sheet of phyllo with butter and sprinkle lightly with cinnamon and brown sugar. Fold the sheet in half lengthwise. Dollop about 2Tbsp of filling at the bottom centre. Fold in the sides lengthwise and loosely roll the package upward until you have a cylinder, as you would with a cabbage roll or stuffed grape leaf. Place the pastry on cookie sheet. Repeat for remaining sheets of phyllo.
Before baking, brush pastries with butter and sprinkle with more cinnamon. Bake in a preheated oven for approx. 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Oatmeal candy
Try as I may to convince myself otherwise, I’ll never be much of a baker. I’m impatient. Can’t follow a recipe to save my life. Hate measuring cups. Never have flour in the cupboards. Or eggs in the fridge. I think box mixes are kind of scary, and don’t like fussy things – mixers and fondants and whipping buttercream until my arms turn to jell-o.
I’m a cook at heart, who stirs and braises and chops and substitutes and judges cookbooks by their photos and stories, ’cause I know I’ll never actually follow a recipe as I find it.
That said, I do have a sweet tooth – and despite my love of mangoes and apple slices with almond butter – sometimes only butter and sugar do the trick. This recipe was born of that necessity and ingredients I always have kicking around: oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, unsweetened coconut, salt and butter. They get tossed together, spread on a cookie sheet and baked in a medium oven – and the result is magical. 10 minutes later, I have crunchy and sweet and buttery little pieces of candy, which hint at salted caramel and apple crumble topping. They’re at once incredibly complex and completely unfussy.
A couple pieces with Earl Grey tea make the perfect snack on a rainy afternoon or after-dinner sweet.
Oatmeal candy
(makes 10 small pieces)
The eight-minute bake is a very rough guide. Depending on your oven’s temperament, it could be slightly more or less. Just watch for edges that are slightly golden, and a toasty smell that pulls you toward the oven. If you have it, unsweetened coconut is a star ingredient in this candy. And don’t omit the salt!
Ingredients
1c quick-cooking rolled oats
1/2c brown sugar
3Tbsp unsalted butter, melted (or salted, just omit the pinch of salt)
heavy pinch of sea salt
cinnamon, to taste
coarse sea salt, to finish
optional: shredded unsweetened coconut, chopped nuts, chopped dried fruit
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In bowl, combine all ingredients. The butter should just barely coat the dry ingredients so they stick together. Spread mixture about 1/4 inch thick on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, pat firmly into place. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake for approx. 8 minutes, until just golden. Remove from oven and lift parchment off cookie sheet to a counter to cool. While still warm, score with a knife for even pieces. Alternatively, keep in one large piece and break off bites as needed.
Will keep, covered, for a few days in a cool cupboard.
An abundance of bananas
My sister has a peculiar habit of hoarding produce – bunches of grapes here, a basketful of avocados there, whole vines of tomatoes ripening on the counter. And without fail, she’ll then leave the city for a swath of time, leaving me and the produce to languish and stare at one-another. A girl can only eat so many avocados.
Which is how I found myself this afternoon with seven spotted bananas on our dining room table. I’m not, unlike my sister, much for eating bananas out of hand – except sliced and smeared with almond butter on occasion – so they had been suntanning happily since E left last Monday.
The only sensible thing to do? Make banana bread, of course. Banana bread demands fruit that’s just about to turn – spotted, brown, yielding to the touch – which transforms into something sweet-scented in the oven, familiar like childhood.
This bread comes together in a snap – just six ingredients turned into a bowl and then again into a loaf pan. It’s happily eaten warm, straight from the oven, or wrapped up in slices to tuck away in the freezer and take with tea or throw into a weekday lunch.
The Simplest Banana Bread
I’m a purist, but I imagine this loaf would be delicious with a sprinkling of chocolate chips in the batter, or some chopped walnuts mixed in, or thinly-sliced dried apricots nestled throughout.
Ingredients
3 very-ripe spotted bananas, mashed
2 large eggs
1.5c unbleached all-purpose flour
1c brown sugar, as free of clumps as possible
1tsp baking soda
sprinkling of cinnamon, to your taste (I use 1/2 a teaspoon, or so)
Equipment
1 standard-size loaf pan
parchment paper
mixing bowl
spatula
Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a loaf pan or line with parchment paper, and set aside.
In a bowl, mash bananas roughly with a fork. Add the eggs and stir to combine. Dump in the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and cinnamon, stirring just to combine. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for approximately 45-50 minutes.
The loaf is ready when its top is cracked and golden, and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Your house will smell like sugar-scented heaven. Makes one standard-size loaf.
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