This easy nut and seed snack mix can be made ahead of time for your next party. Serve it during cocktail hour or make it a special addition to the dessert table.
I had my fair share of store-bought, flavored nuts before I realized just how easy they are to make at home. A little of your favorite sweetener, some butter or coconut oil and a few spices, plus some relatively low maintenance time in the oven, and you have a holiday gift for friends or a party snack.
Add a twist to your holiday stuffing! This recipe takes my favorite combo of pears, walnuts and Gorgonzola and turns them into a delicious version of one of my favorite holiday sides.
Friends of ours hosted a Thanksgiving potluck and I was put on the stuffing list. Since mine was stuffing number 2 at the dinner and stuffing number 1 was straight up traditional, I was given free reign to get creative. So I volunteered to bring this.
I made this recipe before…in 2009! 2009?! To be honest with you, I can’t believe I’ve been blogging that long. But there that post sits, with some pretty ugly photos and in need of some revision.
Switch up your cold grain salads and add some sorghum! In this recipe, the chewy grain is combined with pomegranate and walnuts, and then topped off with tangy goat cheese.
I was cooling down from my run last week, taking a nice leisurely walk back to the house, when I saw it. Tucked between two houses was a tree with long branches that were bending under the weight of beautiful red pomegranates.
I see fruit trees around here all the time – figs, citrus, persimmons – and while I’ve seen a pomegranate tree before, I had never seen one in our neighborhood. It was gorgeous.
And I want some!
When I see trees loaded with fruit that seem to be untouched I am so tempted to knock on the door and ask if the owners are going to use the fruit. But I have never gotten up the courage. Then again, the stakes have never been quite this high. A pomegranate might be just enough to get me out of my comfort zone.
So here is the plan. I’m going to watch the tree for the next few weeks and if none of the fruit disappears, I’m doing it. I’m going to walk up and ring the doorbell.
I think. Maybe.
This post continues my series on peanut flour. If you’d like to read more, check out the Peanut Chile Rubbed Pork Chops and the Nectarine Coconut Peanut Flour Scones.
As soon as I read that peanut flour would make a nice addition to dog treats, I knew I couldn’t leave the pugs out of my recipe experiments. I hadn’t made homemade treats in a while and I got the feeling they were missing them.
They had no idea that what was going on in the kitchen had anything to do with them. I mixed, I baked, but then, I got ready to photograph.
I am crazy for peanut flour. I discovered it last year after attending a nutrition and cooking retreat with The Peanut Institute. After doing a little web research, I found it mentioned around the web a couple of years ago (likely because Trader Joe’s carried it for a while), but it was a new ingredient to most of us at that retreat.
I’ve always been a huge peanut and peanut butter fan so it’s logical that peanut flour is my new favorite thing. It’s light and powdery without the graininess you find in some flours. It adds a pleasant nutty flavor and when stirred into oatmeal or a shake, it is super smooth and creamy.
It has quickly become my plant-based protein powder, but as I hope to show you over the next few posts, it is incredibly versatile in all types of recipes.
Peanut flour is made using raw high-oleic peanuts (about 80 percent oleic acid) that are cleaned, blanched and roasted. Then they are pressed using a natural oil extraction process (without the use of solvents) to produce a flour that is either 12 percent fat or 28 percent fat, depending on the amount of oil extracted. The process is similar to making cocoa powder and as a result you can sub peanut flour to cocoa powder at a 1:1 ratio.
At the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco last January, I had the opportunity to meet a representative from Golden Peanut Company. They supply bulk peanut products to manufacturers and restaurants. After discussing my interest in experimenting with more peanut flours, they sent me a sample of 4 varieties and I’ve been working with the ingredients ever since.
I received the four flours pictured above – 12 percent Light Roast, 28 percent Light Roast, 28 percent Certified Organic Medium Roast and 28 percent Dark Roast. You can see the color differences in the photo based on the roasts.
Peanut flour is great for dry rubs, sauces, baked goods, pet treats and as a stir in for shakes, yogurt and oatmeal. The 28 percent fat varieties are 40 percent protein and can be used for just about everything. The 12 percent fat varieties are 50 percent protein and are good for when you want less peanut flavor, but plenty of protein. (I like to use the 12 percent in shakes.)
The light and medium roasts work better in baked goods because the baking will roast the flours further. The dark roasts were developed for cold uses and they add a nice flavor to uncooked sauces or dressings and confections.
According to Golden Peanut Company, their peanut flour is gluten-free, GMO-free, all natural and kosher. I should disclose right now that the fact that it is gluten-free isn’t the reason I use it. It can be a great option for those on a gluten-free diet, but I don’t have a gluten intolerance so you will find that some of my recipes for baked goods do include some wheat flours for binding.
If you’d like to try peanut flour yourself the best resource for consumer purchases is Byrd Mill online. I’ve mentioned them before because we received their peanut flour samples from The Peanut Institute after the retreat. A tip when you buy your own — because peanut flours use high-oleic peanuts they are more shelf stable than traditional peanuts. They should be stored in a cool and dry place, preferably the refrigerator, and last 9 to 12 months.
So now that you know a little more about the flour, let me show you one of my favorite ways to use it — as a dry rub. These pork chops are coated in light roasted 28 percent peanut flour, chile powder and ginger before being seared in the skillet and finished off in the oven. The result is a juicy chop with a little heat and a mild nutty flavor.
If you have some questions about peanut flour, send them my way. There are many more recipes to come!
Makes: 4 servings
2 tbsp 28 percent Light Roast Peanut Flour
1 tbsp ancho chile powder
2 tsp coconut sugar (or your favorite dark sugar)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp medium roast ground coffee
1 tsp salt
1 to 1 ¼ lb. center cut loin chops (4 chops about ½-inch thick)
2 tbsp olive oil (or your favorite cooking oil)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
In a small dish, stir together the peanut flour, chile powder, sugar, ginger, coffee and salt. Pat the pork chops dry with a paper towel and then coat each evenly with the dry rub.
Heat the oil over medium-high in a large cast iron skillet. Place the pork chops in the skillet (they should sizzle). Cook for 1 minute and flip. Place the skillet in the oven and baked for 6 to 7 minutes, until the chops are cooked through. (Pork should reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees F.)
Let rest 2 to 3 minutes and serve.
A few references if you’d like to explore:
How to use peanut flour from Golden Peanut Company (pdf)
In a Nutshell: A Better Peanut
More About Specialty Peanut Flour, Aromatic Oil and Extract from Golden Peanut Company
Unless you count frequently visiting the IKEA marketplace and staying well stocked in lingonberry jam, I have little experience with Scandinavian cuisine. Had the opportunity for more experiences arisen, I would have snatched them up as it’s an area of the world that has always intrigued me, and one that has been on our travel list for a while. It’s just that even in this diverse food scene that I now live in, Scandinavian still doesn’t top the list of well-marketed options.
When I saw Tina Nordström’s Scandinavian Cooking I knew I needed a copy for my cookbook shelf. What a unique addition! I can safely say that I have nothing like this book in my collection. It not only fills a cuisine void, it is also a pretty outstanding cookbook.
Tina is a Swedish celebrity chef, host of the PBS show New Scandinavian Cooking and author of several cookbooks. This book, which she describes as the most comprehensive book that she has written, is speckled with family photos, letters and personal essays that give you a peek into her life. It’s comfortable style makes you feel as if you are in the kitchen cooking with her or dining at her family table. It’s an intimate feeling that you don’t get from many cookbooks.
After feeling at home as a result of the intro, next I was drawn in the by the food photos. They are exactly how I love them – moody and intriguing with a classic comfort that makes you feel happier by simply viewing them.
Next the recipes were there to educate me. It wasn’t enough to see the delicious titles. I just had to read the intros and ingredient lists to see what the food was all about. The book is a true lesson in Scandinavian cooking. I learned so much. Especially that the cuisine goes far beyond fish and my beloved lingonberries.
Whenever I explore new foods, I always go straight to the bread. I’d like to think that it’s not because I like carbohydrates so much. I’d rather think that it’s because breads, crackers or buns and rolls of some form or another tend to be at the foundation of so many cuisines (and if it isn’t bread it’s often rice or noodles).
That’s the first reason why the Swedish Crisp Bread with Cumin caught my attention. The second, was all the flavors. Yogurt, cumin and anise in a flatbread-like crisp? Sign me up!
I can’t stop gushing over the great flavors in this recipe. The tang of the yogurt with the spices is unlike any crisp bread or cracker I’ve had before.
I didn’t get mine rolled out quite as thin as the version pictured in the book, so on the second round of baking I decided to cut them into squares to create crackers. It worked great. Either way they are delicious. (I paired them with a quick spread of thick sour cream and herbs from the pantry.)
If your shelf has a void when it comes to Scandinavian cuisine, this is the cookbook you want to fill it with.
Excerpted with permission from Tina Nordström’s Scandinavian Cooking: Simple Recipes for Home-Style Scandinavian Cooking by Tina Nordström. Photographs by Charlie Drevstam. Copyright, 2014. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
From the book:
I think it’s easier to bake crisp bread in a frying pan. It’s quite traditional and delicious with gravlax and some lemon mayonnaise (see page 92). Or try some green pea guacamole (see page 252). You can even break the crisp bread into a bowl of tomato soup.
30–35 CRISP BREADS
3 cups (700 ml) wheat flour
1 1/4 cups (300 ml) rye flour
1 1/4 cups (300 ml) yogurt
1/2 cup (100 ml) olive oil
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp salt
6 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ground anise seeds
DIRECTIONS:
1. Mix all ingredients into a smooth dough.
2. Roll the dough out into flat pieces and bake them for about 4–5 minutes per side in either a cast iron frying pan without any grease or oil, or in the oven at 425ºF (225ºC) on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
3. Store the crisp bread in a metal box in a dry location.
Disclosure: This book was sent to me for review purposes. I was not required to write about it and received no compensation for doing so.
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I’m awful at math.
It’s not so much that I can’t solve simple math problems, but more that I don’t trust myself. I’m that person who whips out my phone when the bill arrives at the table so I can use the calculator app to make sure I’ve added the tip correctly. Sure, I can add, but in the distracted state of dinner conversation, I’d rather be safe than embarrassed.
So there is no logical reason why this poor math student would celebrate 3/14 – Pi Day. That is, until the food community added an ‘e’ to the end and converted it to Pie Day.
Now, I’m in.
I’ve made a few sweet and savor pies over the years. Some with classic ingredients, others with whole grains and coconut oil and a few that are specific to countries around the world. In celebration of Pie Day, here are a few of my very favorites. (Click on the name to go to the recipe.)
