Orange and Black Cornbread

Today's cornbread obsession is brought to you by the colors orange and black.

I've been wanting to do a sweet potato cornbread. And, heaven knows there are plenty of recipes for sweet potato cornbread out there. Problem is, most of them are... sweet. And, sweet won't work with black beans. Because the other thing I've been wanting to do is a cornbread that celebrates the impending month of October.

Beautiful, glorious October. Month of changing leaves, mercurial weather, the return of pie pumpkins, and just about everyone's birthday. Oh, yeah... and that other holiday.

So... this calls for an unapologetically orange cornbread, speckled with black beans, topped with creepy black sesame seeds.  And, just like October in Southern Cal, a touch of heat.

It's too bad Spouse would rather die than eat sweet potato.  But, sometimes a girl's just gotta bake what a girl's gotta bake. Today, I had to bake sweet potato and black bean cornbread. 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C. rinsed and drained black beans
2 ounces oil
280 grams organic yellow cornmeal (2 C.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper
Dash or two of smoked paprika
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
9 ounces goat milk
7 ounces sweet potato puree
2 eggs
1 Tbsp. agave syrup
Black sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Put oil in 8" square baking pan. Turn toaster oven or real oven to 425 degrees. Place pan in oven while oven preheats. Pay a little attention to the oven as you're mixing up the cornbread. Oil left unattended at high heat: Bad things could happen. 
2. Mix cornmeal, salt, baking powder & soda, chipotle, paprika, and xanthan together.
3. Mix goat, potato, eggs, and agave together.
4. Mix dry and wet stuff together.
5. Take the pan out of the oven, swirl the oil around a bit, then pour it into the batter. Mix well.
6. GENTLY fold in the black beans.  If you're too vigorous, the black beans will smoosh and discolor the cornbread. Which could also be nice and disgustingly Halloweenish. But really, it's not what we're going for here. So, do be gentle.
7. Sprinkle black sesame seeds on top, then bake for about 20 - 25 minutes until the cornbread tests done.

Serve with organic butter. Just don't serve it to Spouse 1.0.

April Fool's Day Breakfast

When I saw that April Fool's Day was on a Friday this year, my first thought was, "April Fool's Day! Wow, what a cool day for doing a themed breakfast."

So, I immediately snagged it as MINE.

And, my next thought was, "OK, so... now... how exactly do you turn food into an April Fool's Day joke?

Start with Black Bean Brownies. I did a trial run, and sure enough, they were edible.

Then, one day I added some cheese to some millet I was making for The Spouse, and realized I had just invented Cheese Not Really Grits.

The menu was starting to take shape.

I noticed a recipe for eggless scrambled eggs in a library book.... made with tofu, colored egg-ishly with turmeric, and seasoned with enough onion, garlic, and mushroom to hide the tofu-ieness.

And, oddly enough, scrambled tofu wasn't awful. Probably because of all the onion and garlic.

Now, the only thing missing from the menu was fruit. I always bring fruit. It's expected. But, how on earth can fruit be deceptive?

It can't. Fruit is just fruit.

I racked my brains. I may have wracked them, too.

Options:

• Do normal fruit,  resulting in 25% of the menu not fitting the theme
• Skip the fruit, violating my self-imposed fruit rule

Nope. Neither option was acceptable.

More racking.

A friend pointed out that tomatoes are fruit. Good point, but everyone knows that tomatoes are fruit. She also reminded me that avocados are fruit. 

Now we're getting somewhere. Tomato & avocado salad. Expensive, lots of work, but maybe.

Then, last week, browsing through another library book, a blinding flash of the obvious: Rhubarb is a Vegetable!!!

Yah... Rhubarb with strawberries. Glorious! 

I'll skip the details of the rhubarb quest. Suffice it to say, when you add the value of the time spent searching, miles traveled, and cost of two 10-oz bags of the frozen vegetable, you've got a dollar amount exceeding the average American's life savings.

And so, the April Fool's Day menu is complete.

Happy April Fool's day!

Green Pea Biscuits For St. Pat's

Alas, the green pea flour I’d ordered had not arrived yet, and I needed to make a green breakfast for The Spouse. Not that he expects, or wants, a green breakfast for St. Pat’s day – or ever. It’s just something I like to do for him.

In years past, green breakfast was easy. Just add copious amounts of green food coloring to … well… just about anything. (Green rice is lovely. Green oatmeal is kind of gross.)

But, in this brave, healthy new world of ours, green food coloring is just not appealing. (Spouse says that it never was, but that’s beside the point.)

So, green breakfast has to be naturally green, and there’s no green flour with which to make it. Luckily, I had a bag of frozen peas on hand, and some frozen chopped spinach. And, I had some gluten free Bisquick a dear friend had sent me.

Reading the ingredients on the Bisquick, the only thing that is expressly forbidden to us is the white processed sugar. But, desperate times call for desperate measures, and a little sugar once a year won't kill him.

So, I started with the basic biscuit recipe from the box, but at 2/3 quantity.  Substituted blenderized peas for some of the milk. Added some shredded white cheddar for flavor and for extra binding ability.   Drained chopped spinach for a little green-on-green effect.

Oops on the liquid. 2/3 of 2/3 is not ... 2/3. The batter was a bit wet and sticky. And, sampling the batter, it was just to pea-ey. Blech.

The second problem was easy to fix: Just add a bunch of dry chopped onion, dry garlic, and ground pepper.  Alas, the dry onion didn't soak up too much of the liquid, so I had to squish in some extra bisquick. 

The green-on-green sure did turn out pretty, even when baked. But, the real question is, would they elicit the official St. Pat's Day Look of Dread on The Spouse's face? Er, I mean, the real question is, would they taste good?

Lucky for me, the answer to both questions was a resounding "Yes!"

Green Pea Biscuits

1 1/3 C Gluten-free Bisquick

1/4 C butter or shortening

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/3 C whirled peas – or a little more

1/3 C almond milk, soy milk, or dairy milk.

About 1/2 C thawed frozen chopped spinach

1 C shredded white cheddar cheese

Dehydrated chopped onion, garlic granules, and fresh ground black pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 (F) and lightly grease 2 cookie sheets or iron skillets.
2. Prepare the peas by heating about ½ bag of frozen peas in water until they’re thawed, but not cooked. Drain and whirl in the blender. Measure about 1/3 C or a little more into a glass measuring cup.
3. Add enough almond milk to bring the level up to 2/3 C.
4. Cut the butter or shortening into the GF Bisquick.
5. Add the pea mixture and eggs into the Bisquick mixture and stir in.
6. Add the cheese and the seasonings, and mix well.
7. If the dough seems a little to soft and sticky, mix a little more Bisquick in. (Use your hands.)
8. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto cookie sheet. You can gently smooth the biscuits with your fingers, or just leave them rough.
9. Bake about 13 to 17 minutes, until bottoms are brown and tops/sides are just beginning to brown.
10. Enjoy plain or with butter.

Note: Even if you can eat gluten, I'd stick with the GF Bisquick.  All the mixing in this recipe would make gluteney biscuits tough.  But, GF flours stay nice and fluffy and light.