EclecticCook.com » Breakfast

Green Tomato Muffins and the Birth of a Blog Post

Karen — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:29:51 +0000

Sometimes I get a great idea, or find an inspiring recipe and it’s tested, cooked, photographed and posted in just a few days. Other times….

Not so much.

Follow along as I travel from this recipe’s conception, through the labor, and finally to the birth of a bouncing baby food blog post. May you LOL at the bumps along the way.

Sept. 5th: Saw a small basket of green tomatoes at the farmers market. Bought 3 tomatoes. Got home and wondered what the heck to do with them. Found a recipe for green tomato cake and thought about cupcakes. Found this recipe for browned butter frosting.

Sept. 6th – 9th: Life, Labor Day, and laundry happened. Green tomatoes sit on counter next to bananas. Not a smart move.

Sept. 10th: Shopped for ingredients after work. I hate shopping after work. Apparently, so does everyone else at the grocery store.

Sept. 11th: Piles of laundry to fold after work. I am loudly reminded the family needs clean underwear. Lost the natural light so made the executive decision to bake cupcakes tomorrow. I can do that, since I’m the executive chef. It’s my kitchen and I can be executive chef if I want to be.

Sept. 12th: Discovered 2 green tomatoes have turned orangey, thanks to the over-ripe bananas I parked them next to for a week. Farmers market closed, made emergency call to mother-in-law. She only had green cherry tomatoes. Shoot. Decided to make recipe anyway, leaving out the really, really orange bits. Took lots of pictures. Decided cupcakes are really chunky and look more like muffins, so I nix the browned butter frosting. Made a note to figure out what to do with extra-large bag of powdered sugar I don’t need anymore. First batch of muffins turn out ok, I think they could be better. Raised temperature and cooking time on second batch. Much better.

Original recipe muffins: Batch 1

Original recipe muffins: batch 2

Sept. 13th-18th: Crazy week at work (re-occurring theme). At home there is Girl Scouts, fundraisers, and puberty (No, not me; my daughters). Thought about and ate muffins all week. Discovered I’m not 100% satisfied with recipe. Decided I need a really great apple muffin recipe where I can replace the apples with green tomatoes. Found a recipe on Smitten Kitchen, and the original recipe on the King Arthur Flour website.

Sept. 19: Bought more green tomatoes at the farmers market. Put green tomatoes in the refrigerator this time. Also found some great sweet potatoes and discovered there was a bumper crop of tomatoes this fall. I buy a bunch. Will figure out what to do with them before they get fuzzy. I know I will.

Sept. 20th: Green tomatoes are still in refrigerator. Was persuaded to go for a drive with the family instead of baking. I’m such a slacker.

Sept. 21st-23rd: Yet another crazy week at work. Too pooped to bake when I got home. Still must cook and feed the family dinner or they whine and make lots of noise.

Sept .24: Shopped for ingredients after work. Have I mentioned that I hate shopping after work?

Sept. 25: Brother-in-Law’s birthday. No, I did NOT forget it was his birthday, nor did I forget we were going out to dinner on Friday for his birthday. I simply forgot that it was Friday. Got home after dark. Green tomatoes are still in the refrigerator. Too afraid to check on them. Go to bed hoping they are still green.

Sept. 26: Cleaned and vacuumed the house. Am shocked, as always, at how much fur 3 cats and a dog lose in just a few days. Visited dentist with youngest daughter then spent the afternoon reading #blogherfood09 tweets. Wished I had been able to afford, and get the time off work, to go. No, I’m not jealous and I don’t hate everyone who went. Not anymore.

Sept. 27: Finally got off my lazy butt and baked the freakin’ muffins. Also made Nanaimo bars (future post) and Pork and Apple Stew (yet another future post). Must have found my motivational muse. Or had way too much coffee.

Sept. 28th-30th: Brought laptop to work and did some photo editing over lunch in the staff exercise room because it’s quiet and nobody uses it. Indulged in a quick giggle at the thought of edited muffin pictures in the exercise room. It’s the little things in life.

Oct 1st: Got home from work, which, not surprisingly, was crazy . Decided I really needed to post this since I’m working all weekend and next week is going to be crazy too (need to get a thesaurus and find me some crazy synonyms).

→Coming up:

Oct. 2nd: Go to work. Come home from work. Try to find time (or steal a chunk of sleep time) to post muffins to the usual suspect food porn sites. Remember to write up PDF of printable recipe and post it, not forget like I did with the last recipe.

Sometime Next Week: Sleep.

Green Tomato Muffins
Adapted from King Arthur Flour
Makes 12 Muffins

Green tomatoes add a surprising and subtle tart bite to these fall flavored muffuns.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp kosher salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar, packed plus more for sprinkling
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ cups green tomatoes, seeded and chopped

Preheat oven to 450°F. Grease and flour muffin tin or line with paper cups. In a medium bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars. Add the egg and mix well to combine. Gently stir in the buttermilk.* Stir in the flour mixture fold in the tomatoes.

Fill the muffin cups with the batter. Generously sprinkle the muffins with brown sugar. Bake for 10 minutes and then lower the oven temperature to 400°F. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes more. Muffins should be golden brown and a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin will come out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from tin and cool completely on a wire cooling rack.

*The original recipe warns about mixing gently or the buttermilk will curdle the mixture. I don’t know if my gently stirred mixture “curdled”, per say, but I suspect the straight-from-the-fridge cold buttermilk just wouldn’t mix in very well with the butter. I just shrugged and went with it anyway, and the muffins were just fine.

(Printable Recipe)

Chili Egg Bake and my Weekend Horribilis

Karen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:24:11 +0000

“The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.” Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote. To express the same sentiment, the French say “C’est la Vie”, that’s life. I personally prefer something a little more descriptive. Since this blog is rated PG (i.e. my kids read it), lets just say that it starts with “Sh” and ends with “Happens” m’kay?

So Labor Day didn’t turn out quite the way I envisioned it; the last hurrah of summer, a weekend long series of spectacularly entertaining events involving friends, family, food and beer. Nope. Not this year. No gathering, no backyard grilling, nary a friend in site. Due to circumstances beyond my control, dinners were rushed every night, and the recipes I had so carefully created were hastily cooked, hastily eaten and photographically undocumented.

Oh and I got a haircut from someone (not my usual someone) who, upon entering the salon, gave me a look that seemed to say “I’d rather have an enema than cut your hair”. Or maybe she just wasn’t all that thrilled about working on Labor Day. Either way, I did learn a valuable life lesson: If your hair dresser looks at you like something that she just scraped off the bottom of her shoe, chances are the hair cut isn’t going to be exactly what you were looking for.

And now for a moment of silence whilst I wallow a teeny bit in my puddle of pity…

Right. Back to “My Weekend Horribilis” Of course it wasn’t all bad. There was the delightful poolside conversation I had with a good friend while the kids splashed away happily. Not my pool, his. I don’t have a pool. Unless it rains, then I have a lake. There was the drive-in on Saturday with my daughters, their two friends, an air mattress and lots of pillows. If you are lucky enough to have one in your area, and it’s still warm enough where you live, take your family to the drive-in. I promise you, you won’t regret it. It’s not about the movies; it’s about letting your kids wear their PJ’s and slippers out of the house, curling up together under the stars, and eating cookies and popcorn for dinner, just this once.

So I know what you’re thinking; “Enough about you already, where’s my recipe?” And I’m thinking; “Geez, can’t a girl take a few paragraphs to share her feelings?â€ And you’re thinking; “Maybe a sentence or two, Karen, after that it gets kinda boring”, and I’m thinking “Well poo”.

We have a restaurant on site where I work, and on Fridays, they cook breakfast for the staff to eat during our weekly meeting. Every so often when the stars align just right, Rachel makes “The Pouff”

After poking, proding, and being a general pain in the butt, I was told that “The Pouff” was just some eggs, diced green chilis, cottage cheese, and whatever other melty cheese was on hand.

I did some internet digging, visited the library and after some trial and error settled on this recipe . I fiddled with it (as I am wont to do) to make something I oh so creatively named “Chile Egg Bake”

I’ve made the pouff with ricotta and also with cottage cheese. The ricotta version has the same texture and density of a fritatta. The cottage cheese version is much lighter, fluffier and almost creamy. I like them both, but the cottage cheese is my secrect favorite.

Chili Egg Bake

5 large eggs
1 tbsp flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 cup ricotta or 2/3 cup small curd cottage cheese
1 ½cups Monterrey Jack cheese, divided
½ cup parmesan cheese
1 tbsp butter, melted plus more for baking dish
2 tbsp diced green chiles (about ½ of a 4 oz can)
1/8 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter an 8×8 inch baking dish. Whisk together the eggs, flour, baking powder, ricotta or cottage cheese, 1 cup of Monterrey Jack, the parmesan cheese, butter, chiles and pepper until combined. Pour into the baking dish, top with the reserved ½ cup Monterrey Jack and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden and the center has puffed up. Let rest for 10 minutes and then serve. Toppings can include pico de gallo, chopped green onions, avocado and sour cream.

(Printable Recipe)