Two Kinds of Meatballs

Basic meatball recipe:

1 pound ground beef or chicken
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

For chimichurri meatballs:

1. Use beef.
2. Stir in the egg and as much of the bread crumbs as necessary to get a slightly damp mixture.
3. Add several chopped cloves of garlic, a good handful of washed, chopped fresh parsley and red pepper flakes to suit your desired level of heat.
4. Roll into small balls. Bake on an oiled sheet until done, about 8-10 minutes in a 350 oven.
5. Serve with chimichurri sauce.

For taco meatballs:

Use chicken and 1/2 a packet of commercial taco seasoning. Follow above directions, ignoring steps 3 and 5. Serve alone or with salsa.

Huancaína Sauce (Peruvian Cheese Sauce)

I dumped, but my recipe is similar to this one. I used about 4 cloves of garlic, some cream cheese AND boxed cream AND queijo minas and plenty of black pepper. I also used lemon juice and should have used lime. Oh well. Aji is traditional and gives the best flavor. If you substitute, try to use a pepper with heat and a bit of heft like a jalepeño. Cayenne would work in a pinch too.

Watermelon Basil Soup and Pita Crisps

1/4 ripe watermelon, seeded
small handful fresh basil leaves
1 cup tomatoes (cherry tomatoes are best), chopped
juice of one lime
olive oil
salt
pepper
sugar

Take 1/3 cup of the watermelon and dice. Set aside. Put the rest of the watermelon and tomatoes into a blender with lime juice and blend. Add olive oil, salt, pepper and sugar to taste (hot pepper too, if that's your style). Stir in the reserved watermelon, chill and serve with basil leaves on top.

Pita Crisps

store-bought pitas
olive oil
salt
garlic powder

Split the pitas and cut into quarters. Oil a baking sheet or spray the pitas with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and garlic powder, and put into a 350 oven until just browned and crisp, about 10 minutes. Remove, let cool and store in an air-tight container.

Peppermint Meringues

I'm just going to link to the original recipe here. I substituted peppermint oil for the raspberry flavoring. :)

Caramel Corn

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 t salt
1 stick butter
1/4 cup light syrup
1/2 t baking soda

Popped popcorn and toasted nuts (no less than 4 cups, no more than 8)

In a large saucepan, bring the first four ingredients to a rolling boil for 3 mintues, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add baking soda. Pour over popcorn (or pour popcorn into the saucepan, depending on the size of your pot) and stir to combine. Be very careful, as caramel can give painful burns! Pour into a large, greased baking pan and bake in a 300-325 degree oven for 15 minutes, stirring every five minutes to avoid burning. Turn off the oven and allow caramel corn to cool and become crunchy before breaking into pieces and storing in an air-tight container.

Note: the less popcorn you use, the more coated it will be, so make this according to your caramel preferences!

Pumpkin Bread

With the grey skies and cooler temperatures of this week, I was tempted to make something more autumnal for this week's breakfasts and tea times. As there was a container of pumpkin defrosted in my refrigerator, I decided to try my hand at altering a recipe rather drastically. In my experience, these kind of breads are much too oily and much too sweet, so I was going for a "healthy" variation that also added in two flavors that I think are perfect for pumpkin: walnuts/nozes and maple.

As we just had a Canadian visitor, we have a jug of real maple syrup sitting in the cupboard, so I pulled a little from that secret stash. I also made good use of my birthday mortar and pestle to make up my own nut flour: a handful of oats, a shy 1/2 cup of broken nuts and about 1 tablespoon of flax seed. The oats help keep it more on the flour, less on the paste side. But if you are not as much of a ridiculous overachiever as I am, you could just add an equal amount of regular flour and toss in some ground nuts.

It's good, not too sweet, with a little bit of nuttiness and the perfect texture. Bet it would be phenomenal as toast...or French toast! I can't taste the maple as much as I'd like, but it's my own fault for hauling off and dumping spices in!

The original recipe is here, but I made a lot of changes!

Maple-Pumpkin Bread

Makes one loaf

Ingredients
• about 1 1/2 cups pureed pumpkin (I forgot to measure!)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup

• 1 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat
• 3/4 cup mix oat/nut/flaxseed flours
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoons salt
• 1/1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
• (or, do as I did and add 1 teaspoon speculoos, 1/4 nutmeg, 1/4 cinnamon)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

2. Mix first set of ingredients until blended. In a separate bowl, stir together the dry ingredients in the second set. Add the dry mix to the wet ingredients but do not overstir; just until the flour is absorbed is fine.

3. Pour into the pan and bake: depending on your oven, 40-50 minutes. A knife or toothpick should come out clean.

P.S. I forgot to take a picture before slicing into this bread. It does get dark, don't get too frightened and think it is burning when it isn't...