Granola Crumbles

Let’s see here… It has been an entire week since I last wrote a blog post. Amidst all the craziness to get ready for a long camping trip and a few days in Seattle, cooking dinners to heat up at the campsite, cooking everything perishable in the refrigerator then freezing them (so nothing gets thrown out), packing clothes for unpredictable rainforest weather and nice clothes for Seattle, laundry and dishes so we don’t come home to a stinky house, making sure we have all the camping gear and food, I wrote three blog posts. One was the Stone Fruit Tart, then two others that were scheduled to come up but didn’t. Blogspot Bloggers please help, do you by any chance know how to schedule posts in advance and have them actually pop up on schedule? I think I did everything right, so there was definitely a moment of frustration when I got back to civilization and found out that it didn’t work. *sad face*    

As much as I would love to share our days in the wild and all the food we ate in Seattle, there’s some unpacking, tent-drying, laundry, grocery shopping, yoga catch-up, and (ugh) house cleaning to do. The next few posts will be all about our trip… It’s my obligation to tell you all about it because someday (sooner than later), you simply must see what the Olympic Peninsula has to offer… a true Washington State treasure.    

This granola post, now edited, was scheduled to go up last Friday but it didn't. Here it is now though...

It wasn’t until I met DFJ that I discovered how incredibly fun camping is. Last summer we went on a lot of camping trips… the Deschutes (OR) for two days of river rafting, the Columbia Gorge (OR) for some biking and hiking, the San Juan Islands (WA) for a week of kayaking and hiking, and Wallowa Lake (OR) for some hiking.

After recalling our adventures last year, I just realized how lame we have been this year. So, to celebrate this summer, we went to the Olympic Peninsula and camped and explored the park for 5 days and 4 nights (Wednesday of last week until Sunday).  Then, we stayed in Seattle from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon. 

Here’s a super snack that I made before we left for our trip. Let me tell you, these are waaaaaaaaaaaay better than any store bought granola bars.  A healthy power boost during our five days in the wild. 

These homemade granola crumbles started off from Ina Garten’s Homemade Granola Bars recipe in her Back to Basics cookbook. However, since I did not have all the dried fruit ingredients that her recipe requires, I used what was on hand: cranberries, raisins, and crystallized ginger. Ina Garten’s recipe only called for almonds, but since our pantry is teeming with nuts, I threw in some cashews, walnuts, and sunflower seeds into the mix. Other modifications that I made were the addition of almond butter and almond extract and lessening the amount of honey and sugar. DFJ was a little disappointed that I cut back on the sugar, so I appeased him by taking on his suggestion of pouring on some melted chocolate on top.

I wanted to make granola bars for our camping trip. However, I didn’t want to use too much honey and sugar because overly sweet stuff actually hurts my throat and I’ll be honest… yes,  I do have a thing against using too much sugar. As a result, the bars ended up crumbly because there was not enough honey and sugar to keep it intact. That is how I ended up calling these babies Granola Crumbles because this is exactly how they turned out… crumbly granola bars.

Do not let this bother you though because these crumbles are awesome all the same. Just make sure to catch the bits that fall off when you bite into them. Maybe use a plate when eating them or better yet, put them in a bowl and dollop a generous helping of plain yogurt. If you take it camping, catch the bits in a baggie or with your hands. 

These granola crumbles are delicious! It took a lot of our restraint to save them for the camping trip. The chewy granola pieces look glossy with the sweet, honey-butter coating and everything is made even better with the chocolate glaze.

A power snack that is a cross between healthy and decadent! Make it!

Granola Crumbles (Makes 20 bars, before they crumble)   

Inspired from Ina Garten’s Homemade Granola Bars, Back to Basics

2 ½ cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup shredded coconut, sweetened

Sweet Glaze:

3 tbsp butter, unsalted
2 tbsp almond butter
1/3 cup honey
¼ cup sugar, lightly packed
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract (optional)
¼ tsp salt

Chocolate Topping:
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

½ cup chopped cashews, raw
½ cup chopped walnuts, raw
½ cup sunflower seeds

½ cup raisins
½ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup crystallized ginger, minced

butter to grease pan

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a large roasting pan with butter.

Stir the oats, almonds, and shredded coconut in the roasting pan and toast in the oven for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the sweet glaze and the chocolate topping.

Place the butter, almond butter, honey, sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract, and salt in a small sauce pan. Turn the heat on to medium and let the mixture simmer, stirring once or twice to melt everything. Turn off the heat and set aside.

In a separate sauce pan, melt the semisweet chocolate chips and the white chocolate chips together using the double boiler method. Since I don’t have a double boiler, this is what I do: Fill a sauce pan half full with water and place the chocolate chips in a separate smaller, metal bowl. Attach the metal bowl to the side of the sauce pan using a clamp. Turn the stove on to medium heat and let the water heat up until the chocolate starts to melt. Stir the chocolate with a rubber spatula until the consistency starts to thin just a bit. When the melted chocolate seems spreadable, turn the heat off and set aside.   

When the 10 minutes is up, remove the roasting pan from the oven. Lower the heat to 300 degrees F.

Carefully move the oat-almond-coconut mixture into a large mixing bowl. Add the cashews, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. Stir everything together well with a rubber spatula. Gradually pour the sweet glaze over the dry mixture and stir with a rubber spatula, making sure that all dry ingredients are well-coated. Add in the raisins, cranberries, and crystallized ginger and stir until everything is well mixed.

Butter the roasting pan again. Be careful when doing so, it might still be hot!

Flatten the granola into the pan and pack everything as tightly as you can. Pour the melted chocolate evenly over the top of the granola and spread it all over using a rubber spatula. Bake in the oven for 26-30 minutes.

Let cool for 3-4 hours before cutting the granola.

Notes:

Use a wooden spatula with a thin, flat edge to cut the granola, so as not to scrape your pan.

If you refrigerate the granola once it has cooled down, it might not crumble as much when you cut it.

The bars stayed intact when we kept them in the cooler during our trip, so you might want to do the same. However, they crumble easily… like I said, make sure to catch the crumbs!

Enjoy!  

Summer Rolls

Happy Food Matters Project Monday everyone!

DFJ and I are still out of town…

Hopefully, we survived our Olympic Peninsula 5-day camping adventure and are now back to civilization and strolling around in Seattle.

This week’s recipe, Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce, was chosen by Alyssa of Everyday Maven. Visit Alyssa’s beautiful website for the original Mark Bittman recipe. While you’re there, make sure to check out her other mouth-watering dishes! She always has good ones.

Since I am not in the comforts of my own kitchen, I am unable to make these rolls. However, I would like to share with you some rolls that I have made in the past. They are full of delicious vegetables and have spicy nut sauces too!

Roasted Vegetable Rice Wraps with Spicy Almond Crumbles

Stir Fried Swiss Chard Rice Wraps with Spicy Honey Cashew Sauce

Don't forget to check out what other FMP members did with their rolls at our website. Everyone always comes up with great ideas!

Stone Fruit Tart

I have only been to San Francisco once and would absolutely love to go again! Two summers ago, I went there with my girlfriends, Heidi and Kaelee. We had a blast! During the wee hours of the morning, I roamed the quiet streets, welcomed the cold air, and the grey morning skies. It was a big temperature difference from the desert summers of Eastern Washington and the chilly mornings felt good. Those walks led me to La Boulange every day during our stay. The smell of butter, sugar, flour, and chocolate lured me into their door and just like that, I was in love. As a souvenir, I bought the bakery owner’s cookbook: The American Boulangerie by Pascal Rigo.

In honor of my love for Pascal Rigo’s bakery, it has been my ritual to make his sweet tart dough every summer or fall with different toppings each time: pears, apples, berries, pumpkin, or lemon. Fruit tarts are great! Once you find the right crust, there are endless choices for toppings… the best among all is to use whatever is in season. Freshly picked fruit tastes so good already that there really is no need to mess with it by dousing it with sugar and whatever else to mask its delicate flavor. Just let it be!   

Last week, we had our friends, Jo, Ros, and Ken over for a mid-week dinner get together. Nothing fancy was served, just some chili, homemade corn bread, and of course, a simple fruit tart for dessert. DFJ was in charge of the chili and I was in charge of the baking. We have a good partnership going, he and I.  

Even though we did not have any all-purpose flour on hand (I bid goodbye to all-purpose flour a while ago), I was determined to make a fruit tart. And then, even after I realized we were out of whole wheat flour, I still wanted to make a fruit tart. So, I pulled out my stock of spelt flour and placed my whole-hearted trust in my go-to pâte sucrée or sweet tart dough recipe from The American Boulangerie. For the first time, I tweaked Pascal Rigo’s original recipe by using spelt flour, adding lemon zest, an extra tablespoon of butter, and using half a cup less sugar.

What a pleasant surprise it was to find out that my spelt flour based sweet tart dough turned out wonderful! It resulted in a heavier crust that was both hearty and nutty, with just a touch of sweetness and a subtle citrusy aroma. The dense tart crust went well with the sweet and juicy peach, nectarine, apricot, and blackberry topping.

There is indeed beauty in simplicity! This rustic tart makes for a lovely desert after a day in the sun… every bite is full of summer’s promise.  

Stone Fruit Tart

Adapted from Pascal Rigo's Pâte Sucrée, The American Boulangerie 

Tart (makes 2 tart crusts)

10 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 cup powdered sugar
zest of a small lemon
1/2 tsp salt
2 and 1/2 cups spelt flour
2 large eggs, beaten

Topping:

1 fresh peach, sliced thin (peeled)
1 fresh nectarine, sliced thin (unpeeled)
1 fresh apricot, sliced thin (unpeeled)
1/2 cup fresh blackberries
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp granulated sugar

a tad of butter to grease tart pan


Place butter in a large mixing bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk in the lemon zest into the sugar. Move the lemon sugar into the butter bowl.

Using a hand held electric mixer on low, cream the butter and sugar. When the mixture is smooth and creamy, add the flour a half cup at a time and keep mixing on low until the texture resembles sand granules.

Pour the beaten eggs into the sandy mixture and mix on low until the dough comes together and you can't mix anymore. Use a rubber spatula to help the dough come together into a ball. Divide the dough in half and form each into half inch flat disks.

Cover each disk with plastic food wrap and allow it to firm up in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. This is a necessary step, otherwise your dough will fall apart. NOTE: If you're only making one tart, you may keep the other dough refrigerated for 3 days or frozen for up to a month. If you freeze the dough, make sure to let it thaw in the refrigerator before handling it.

In the meantime, prepare the fruit topping. Slice apricot, peach, and nectarine. Place the stone fruit slices and blackberries in a large glass bowl. Pour lemon juice into the fruit and gently mix together with a rubber spatula. Let sit until the dough has firmed up.

Set an oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Grease the tart pan with butter thoroughly.

Move the dough onto a clean and lightly floured surface. With the use of a rolling pin, roll the dough into a bigger circle, about 10 inches in diameter. Carefully fold the dough in half and very carefully move onto the tart pan. Gently unfold the dough and settle it evenly on the pan, pressing the dough up to the sides of the tart pan. If the dough has cracks or breaks apart, no biggie, just massage it back together.

When the dough is set up in the pan, arrange the fruit mixture on top. Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven. Lower the temperature down to 350 degrees F and continue to bake for 45 minutes. Turn off the oven and move the tart pan to cool on a wire rack. When the tart has cooled down, remove the sides from the pan and very carefully slide the tart off the baking pan onto a serving plate.

Serve at room temperature.

Gotta love summer!

Cucumber-Cantaloupe Gazpacho and Radish with Fleur de Sel Bruschetta

When I moved here in the US a couple of years ago, I made lots of good friends. Everyone was super nice and welcomed me warmly. Among all the female friends that I made, only five were single. Then all of them got engaged within the past 11 months or so, one got married a couple of weeks ago, and two of them just got married this weekend. Are you kidding me??? I, on the other hand, am just getting more and more awesome every day!   

So… DFJ and I went to two wedding parties on Friday and Saturday. The ceremonies and celebrations were lovely and really reflected the couples’ personalities. Someday, I hope I can pull off a good one just like Hayley and Kaelee did this weekend. Ladies, my love and best wishes to you and your significant others… your amazing journey has just begun!

I forced DFJ to work out with me before getting ready for the weddings and promised him a good post-workout lunch/snack. Before leaving for the weddings on both days, DFJ and I had Cucumber-Cantaloupe Gazpacho and Radish with Fleur de Sel Bruschetta. Simple, light, and delicious!

This week’s recipe choice for the Food Matter’s Project Monday is a wild card. However, instead of choosing a recipe from the ones FMP members previously picked, I happened upon a new one that begged to be tried. Hey, the more recipes tried from the book, the better, right?  

I had a cantaloupe dying to be eaten, basil sitting in water on the kitchen counter, and cucumbers that needed to be used. Leafing through last year’s summer issue of bon apptétit earlier this week, I came upon a melon and silken tofu soup recipe. It is a great idea but not quite what I was looking for. Then, I found a gazpacho recipe in Mark Bittman’s Food Matters Project Cookbook that was just perfect!

Gazpacho is a dish that originated in Spain and is traditionally tomato-based and served cold. Two weekends ago, DFJ and I had lunch with some friends at Saffron in Walla-Walla and we ordered a bowl of apricot gazpacho. It was so dang good and made me realize that gazpacho does not always have to be tomato-based! So, I was thrilled when I found the Cucumber Cups with Melon Gazpacho recipe.

My version did not involve cucumber cups because as usual, I did not want to waste anything. Instead, I blended the cucumber with the melon and made a Cucumber-Cantaloupe Gazpacho.

This made for a great summer soup. It is light, cool, and refreshing. The sweetness of the cantaloupe is toned down by the cucumber and everything is brightened up by the fresh lemon juice. Mark Bittman uses the basil as a garnish but I added the basil in the soup which gave it a fresh, minty taste.

So simple, easy, and fast! Well, it is fast if you don’t count the refrigeration time. 

Cucumber-Cantaloupe Gazpacho (4-6 servings) 

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s Cucumber Cups with Melon Gazpacho, The Food Matters Cookbook      

2 medium sized cucumbers 
1 small cantaloupe 
juice of 1 small lemon  
¼ tsp salt 
¼ tsp pepper 
½ cup fresh basil, packed tightly 

Peel cucumbers and cut lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Roughly chop. 

Cut cantaloupe in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut each half into four equal parts lengthwise. Carefully separate flesh from skin with a sharp small knife. Roughly chop.

Blend cucumbers and cantaloupe in blender until soupy. Add the fresh lemon juice, salt, pepper, and basil. Blend until the basil is finely minced. Taste and add more salt and pepper or lemon if necessary. (I didn’t add any more to mine because I liked the way it tasted.)    

Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.

I have been scouring the farmers market stalls for radishes since I read A Homemade Life but without any luck, until Friday! In her book, Molly Wizenberg talks about how the French eat their radishes: on a slice of good bread with some butter and salt. It sounded simply delicious and definitely worth trying. So, it was made and I don't know if I will ever eat radishes any other way again.   

Radish and Fleur de Sel Bruschetta 
Adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s Radishes and Butter with Fleur de Sel, A Homemade Life

good baguette, ¼ inch slices 
unsalted butter, room temperature
radishes, peeled and sliced super thin 
fleur de sel

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice the baguette into ¼ inch slices and generously spread butter on top. Place the baguettes on a baking pan. When the oven is ready, bake the baguette slices until it just starts to turn crispy, about 4 minutes. Turn off the oven and remove the baguettes. Do not remove the bread from the pan just yet.

Place radish slices on the baguette slices and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Place it back in the oven for about a minute, until the radish starts looking shiny. Pull out of the oven and serve immediately.  

This gazpacho and bruschetta is a match made in heaven!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out which recipes the other FMP members decided to make for Wild Card Monday!

P.P.S. Do you know that this is my 100th blog post? Thank you so much to every one of you who stop by and read about my cooking and life stories... you inspire me to keep doing what I'm doing! Let's keep being friends and sharing our passion for good food!