orange oat scones

I found this recipe for orange oat scones on 101 Cookbooks the other day, but I didn't get around to having all the ingredients and time to make them until last night. I decided to do yoga at like 5:30 pm and felt so good afterwards that I wanted to bake. These scones have a nice fresh smell and taste to them. I think I prefer the spice scone recipe I have made a few times because it has a stronger flavor, and as much as I like using oats, I think they might be part of the reason that I didn't love the texture of these scones. Then again, it could be that between conversions and eyeing my butter measurement, I am pretty sure that I put too much butter in. They were good, though, and they kept well for us to enjoy the next day.

*I made half the recipe and got 6 very large scones

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup turbinado sugar [I just used light brown sugar, but it isn't the same texture as brown sugar in the states, it is the same kind of crystals as regular sugar here]
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups rolled oats
zest of 1 orange
1 cup buttermilk [I just mixed milk with some vinegar - 1 tbsp for 1 cup milk]
1/4 cup coarse turbinado or Demerara sugar, for sprinkling [same light brown sugar as above]
2/3 cup dried currants

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the flour, 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and pulse 15-20 times or until it looks like sandy pearls. (If you are working by hand, cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter.) Transfer the dough to a bowl and stir in the oats and zest. Stir in the buttermilk and currants until just moistened.

Bring the dough together with your hands. If the dough is still too crumbly, stir in more buttermilk a tiny splash at a time, but try to avoid over mixing. After bringing the dough together, gently pat it into an 8-inch round. Cut into triangle shapes (see photo) and transfer to the prepared baking sheet with some room between each scone. Sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the bottoms are deeply golden. [I left mine in for 20 minutes and they were just starting to get golden; they probably could have used more time, but I got antsy.]

sugar

I have had these two tabs open on my browser for a couple weeks now, so I decided to just get the entries done for both at the same time. Also, I didn't really cook tonight (other than mistakenly making too much pasta and just deciding to gorge myself anyway), so I'll substitute my cooking for the week with interesting information and articles. Hopefully someone appreciates that in addition to pictures and my commentary on food, which I am particular to because I like good visuals and hearing myself talk/write. I digress!

My friend Jess had this article linked on her facebook, which is the site I get most of my news and information from, sadly. So thanks, friends, for posting things so I learn about the world. I read books, though. Anyway, so I read the article on New York Times and found it pretty interesting. I mean, the general overall theme is that we eat wayyyy too much sugar and it is potentially a lot worse for us that our brains are rationalizing. A lot worse, keywords being: diabetes, obesity, heart problems, cancer...

The thing I liked most about the article was getting some interesting facts; I really like facts. And good visual aids. Both are in this entry, so scroll around and find what you like. Or read it all, I tried to make careful selections! Or go read the whole article and understand it more fully.

Things I would like to specifically highlight, in case you, dearest readers, are too lazy to read the whole article yourselves:
[Is Sugar Toxic? by Gary Taubes]

• If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.
• Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” to mean both sucrose — beet and cane sugar, whether white or brown — and high-fructose corn syrup. 
•  In the early 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products in part because refined sugar then had the reputation as a generally noxious nutrient. High-fructose corn syrup was portrayed by the food industry as a healthful alternative. It was also cheaper than sugar, which didn’t hurt its commercial prospects. Now the tide is rolling the other way, and refined sugar is making a commercial comeback as the supposedly healthful alternative to this noxious corn-syrup stuff.
• The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.
• In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.
• To be precise, the F.D.A. reviewers said that other than its contribution to calories, “no conclusive evidence on sugars demonstrates a hazard to the general public when sugars are consumed at the levels that are now current.” This is another way of saying that the evidence by no means refuted the kinds of claims that Lustig is making now and other researchers were making then, just that it wasn’t definitive or unambiguous.
• In 1980, roughly one in seven Americans was obese, and almost six million were diabetic, and the obesity rates, at least, hadn’t changed significantly in the 20 years previously. By the early 2000s, when sugar consumption peaked, one in every three Americans was obese, and 14 million were diabetic.
• During the Korean War, pathologists doing autopsies on American soldiers killed in battle noticed that many had significant plaques in their arteries, even those who were still teenagers, while the Koreans killed in battle did not. The atherosclerotic plaques in the Americans were attributed to the fact that they ate high-fat diets and the Koreans ate low-fat. But the Americans were also eating high-sugar diets, while the Koreans, like the Japanese, were not.
• The context of the science changed: physicians and medical authorities came to accept the idea that a condition known as metabolic syndrome is a major, if not the major, risk factor for heart disease and diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that some 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome. For those who have heart attacks, metabolic syndrome will very likely be the reason.
• Having metabolic syndrome is another way of saying that the cells in your body are actively ignoring the action of the hormone insulin — a condition known technically as being insulin-resistant. You secrete insulin in response to the foods you eat — particularly the carbohydrates — to keep blood sugar in control after a meal. When your cells are resistant to insulin, your body (your pancreas, to be precise) responds to rising blood sugar by pumping out more and more insulin. Eventually the pancreas can no longer keep up with the demand or it gives in to what diabetologists call “pancreatic exhaustion.” Now your blood sugar will rise out of control, and you’ve got diabetes.
• The question is whether they’re “chronic toxins,” which means “not toxic after one meal, but after 1,000 meals.” This means that what Tappy calls “intervention studies” have to go on for significantly longer than 1,000 meals to be meaningful.
• One of the diseases that increases in incidence with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. This is why I said earlier that insulin resistance may be a fundamental underlying defect in many cancers, as it is in type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.
• Now most researchers will agree that the link between Western diet or lifestyle and cancer manifests itself through this association with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome — i.e., insulin resistance. 
• The cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do. Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some do both.
• If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. 

butter

I can't remember how I got a hold of this article, but to whoever shared it with me: thank you! I found it pretty interesting. I have come around to the idea that butter is not so bad. I don't really eat a lot of it directly, though I buy myself slightly expensive President slightly salted butter for my toast (it is the ONLY salted butter in the grocery store in Bulgaria, even though there are about 12 different kinds). I do use butter quite often in cooking, and then I go for the cheapest saltless butter. I don't know if we have margarine here, but I wouldn't use it if we did. Even before reading this article, I figure it was better to just use real butter and try to exert some self control towards how much I actually ate of what I made (I am still working on it, somewhat successfully).

The article is on the New York Times and is about butter and cookies, two things the world agrees to love to eat. Through my brief experience as something of a cook, I have definitely learned to follow the directions in recipes. So often I am complimented on what I cook, and almost every time I feel like I have cheated people a bit because all I did is what I was told, and sometimes not even too well in that I skip some ingredients because they are unavailable or I forgot them or what have you. I have learned that the biggest challenge in most cooking endeavors is just getting the ingredients and doing the damn darn thing. Once you do that, things likely work out pretty well. But one key part of following the recipe instructions is doing exactly what it says to do with the butter, at least as far as its original condition entering the recipe. And it is better to just give it a minute than to put it in the microwave.

So, some fun facts from this article [Butter Holds the Secret to Cookies that Sing, by Julia Moskin]:

• The most common mistakes made by home bakers, professionals say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that professionals take for granted, and home bakers often miss.
• Butter is basically an emulsion of water in fat, with some dairy solids that help hold them together. But food scientists, chefs and dairy professionals stress butter’s unique and sensitive nature
• For mixing and creaming, butter should be about 65 degrees: cold to the touch but warm enough to spread. Just three degrees warmer, at 68 degrees, it begins to melt.
• Warm butter can be rechilled and refrozen, but once the butterfat gets warm, the emulsion breaks, never to return
• For clean edges on cookies and for even baking, doughs and batters should stay cold — place them in the freezer when the mixing bowl seems to be warming up. And just before baking, cookies should be very well chilled, or even frozen hard.
• Butter should be creamed — beaten to soften it and to incorporate air — for at least three minutes. “When you cream butter, you’re not just waiting for it to get soft, you’re beating air bubbles into it.”  When sugar is added, it makes more air pockets.
• And those air bubbles are all that cookies or cakes will get. “Baking soda and baking powder can’t make air bubbles. They only expand the ones that are already there.”

I definitely don't follow all the rules well, but I have learned to use butter at the consistency described in the recipe. I also have learned that butter will turn into something soft and fluffy if you just trust the automatic blender. Yes, you put in ever so slightly soft butter into a bowl with some sugar and set it on mix, and you just see clumps of butter flinging itself around with sugar crystals and think my laptop will soon be forever ruined this will never become a light and fluffy mixture. But keep it up, tiger, and three minutes later, it is ready to rumble and continue on its way to being a delicious cookie or icing or cake or whatever. 

lemon cookies

I had a hankering for lemon cookies, I wanted to bake something for my advisory group tomorrow, and the advisors of the Ecology club (my roommate and a neighboring teacher) needed cookies for the Earth Day Celebration tomorrow, and so after finishing my grading tonight, I had no reason not to bake. I found a recipe for lemon cookies that looked manageable, hunted down another cookie sheet as ours were housing chocolate covered strawberries (also for Earth Day bake sale) in the fridge, and set off to bake for the first time in weeks.

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a standing mixer on medium speed, add butter and sugar, and cream until well blended. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. With the mixer on low speed, add eggs, one at a time, until blended. Add lemon juice and zest, mixing until blended.

Add salt, baking powder and flour and mix until blended.

Drop by rounded scoopfuls onto prepared baking sheets and bake until edges are firm with no color, 12 to 15 minutes.

Let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks and let cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar.

I used a 1/2 tbsp measuring spoon to scoop mine and made 44 cookies. After the first batch, which were very textured and didn't spread at all, I started pressing them down with my palms after scooping them on to the sheet so that the finished cookies were round and flat.

lime chicken/tofu and caramelized broccoli

I haven't posted in a while because I went on spring break to Italy, which was very fun and exciting. I met up with one of my closest college friends, and we had a very relaxing and food-filled trip. The first Monday back, I made an unimpressive shrimp wrap dinner, largely unimpressive because the avocados were bad and I had never used frozen shrimp before, so I don't think I cooked them correctly.

This Monday, in spite of being in the middle of third quarter grades (now finished!), I am back to cooking. I found a recipe on 101 Cookbooks that I wanted to try, but the HIT sabotaged me by not having cilantro. I even went back and had a conversation in Bulgarian to try to find it, which my students would kill to have me relive, but still had no success.

So, cilantroless, but with all the rest of the ingredients, I stressed a bit about what to make. I decided that I couldn't fudge the recipe that I had chosen without cilantro, so I resorted to googling my ingredients: lime chicken, and broccoli garlic. I got two recipes, one for spicy garlic lime chicken and one for caramelized broccoli with garlic. I decided to make the chicken and tofu, separately, using the spicy garlic lime recipe, the caramelized broccoli with garlic, and attempt rice again, which always stresses me out because I find that I either burn it or its too wet and mushy still. In the end, it all turned out well, and as we have a Williams visitor who is currently walking across Europe, we got rid of all the leftovers, too.

I will post the recipes separately below, but the way I timed it:

1. Start water for rice, get boiling, add rice, cover, etc, hope for the best 
2. Get broccoli started
3. Marinate chicken in lime juice (not in recipe, but my improvisation)
4. Cook chicken and tofu, separately, after applying spice mix

Caramelized Broccoli with Garlic

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 heads of broccoli (1 1/4 pounds total), stems peeled and heads halved lengthwise - I may have used less

1/2 cup water

3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

Pinch of crushed red pepper

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

In a large, deep skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the broccoli, cut side down, cover and cook over moderate heat until richly browned on the bottom, about 8 minutes. 

Add the water, cover and cook until the broccoli is just tender and the water has evaporated, about 7 minutes. 

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil along with the garlic and the crushed red pepper and cook uncovered until the garlic is golden brown, about 3 minutes. Season the broccoli with salt and black pepper, drizzle with the lemon juice and serve.

Spicy Lime Chicken with Garlic 

(for the tofu, I just added a bit extra of each spice and then mixed it with lime juice on about 5 oz of tofu)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/8 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon dried parsley

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves - I used about a pound of little chicken tender filets

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons garlic powder

3 tablespoons lime juice

In a small bowl, mix together salt, black pepper, cayenne, paprika, 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, onion powder, thyme and parsley. 

Sprinkle spice mixture generously on both sides of chicken breasts.

Heat butter and olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Saute chicken until golden brown, about 6 minutes on each side. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons garlic powder and lime juice. Cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently to coat evenly with sauce. [I had added my lime juice to the chicken to marinate earlier and so didn't add it in later.]