Turkey Meatloaf Muffins with Pumpkin Ketchup Glaze

Last summer I bought a couple of small bouquets of fresh sage and parsley at the farmer's market, and those two little bouquets changed my life.  Or at least my meatloaf.

Meatloaf until then had always a failed attempt to replicate Mom's beef-based, tomato-infused, ketchup-topped comfort food. 

And turkey meatloaf?  A failed attempt's poor cousin.

Until fresh sage.

My first sage-infused turkey meatloaf got a cranberry sauce topping.  And, from then on, all turkey meatloaves contained parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.  Topped with cranberry sauce, they were once a true love of mine.

But, cranberry season ends. The stockpile of frozen cranberries dwindles. And, the container of frozen pumpkin beckons.

Many months ago I came across the term "pumpkin ketchup", mentally went "ewww", and dismissed it entirely.  But, seeing the pretty orange frozen pumpkin, the ketchup concept returned to mind.  Googled up a few recipes, but really wasn't interested in apple or mustard or the whole pantheon of pumpkin pie spices.  No, I wanted a very simple pumpkin ketchup... one that would complement the last of my fresh sage, not go to war with it.

Turkey Meatloaf Muffins with Pumpkin Ketchup Glaze

All measurements are approximate.  This is meatloaf, after all.

Meatloaf

Olive oil spray
Organic blue cornmeal (or cornmeal of choice)
1 organic red onion
3 ribs organic celery
4 oz organic mushrooms
1 2/3 lbs ground turkey with nothing added (Costco's turkey burgers work well)
3 organic eggs
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
3/4 to 1 cup gluten free rolled oats
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 Tbsp chopped fresh sage
2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh thyme
Dash of garlic powder
2 Tbsp ground flax meal
Pumpkin ketchup

1. Preheat oven to 400 (f).  Line 24 muffin cups, then spray with olive oil spray and sprinkle a little blue cornmeal in the bottoms.  The cornmeal helps absorb some of the liquid that cooks out.
2. Chop the onion, celery, and mushrooms reasonably fine and parboil covered briefly in a small amount of water. Let cool.
3. Mix everything  except pumpkin ketchup together.
4. Divide meatloaf mixture evenly among the 24 muffin cups, and press down. 
5. Divide the pumpkin evenly among the meatloaves, and smooth it down.
6. Bake about 25 minutes, until meat is done.

Pumpkin Ketchup

1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 organic sweet onion, chopped fine
1/4 cup organic cider vinegar
3-4 Tbsp honey
1/4 - 1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 - 1/2 tsp allspice
dash of garlic powder
salt & freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cook everything in a small saucepan until the onion starts to get almost translucent.
2. Whir the mixture with a stick blender until almost smooth

Result:  Not as pretty as cranberry topped meatloaves, but tasty enough and a bit lower on the glycemic index.  Definitely a keeper.

Tomato Muffins with Pesto Streusel - Take One

Todays muffins were inspired by a tomato rosemary muffin at myaspergersgirl.blogspot.com, and the pesto recipe I saw in a friend's Williams Sonoma cookbook.  Both needed some changes.  On the base muffin:

• I'm a firm believer in the value of organic eggs over flax goo.
• I needed to use up some BRM all-purpose gf blend a friend had given me.
• I'm not a huge fan of rosemary. 
• Spouse is not a fan of rice milk.
• Spaghetti sauce is more interesting than plain tomato sauce, and less likely to have BPA.

Other than that, I followed the recipe faithfully.

Seriously, if you want a bunch of really yummy GFCF recipes, with gorgeous photos, go to myaspergersgirl.blogspot.com. 

On the pesto, I combined ideas from several pesto recipes, and then tried to make it thicker so it could function sort of as a streusel.

Pesto Streusel

About 1.5 to 2 cups of rinsed, dried, de-stemmed organic basil leaves (not that anyone really measures)
1/4 C raw pine nuts
6-8 Tbsp olive oil
1/8 to 1/4 tsp garlic powder, to taste
a few grinds of sea salt
1/4 C pecorino romano

Pulse everything in the food processor attachment of a stick blender on low until the basil is finely chopped, but not emulsified.  Pesto should be very thick.

Tomato Muffins

Dry Ingredients
2 C Bob's Red Mill GF flour blend (or any GF blend with bean flours)
2 Tbsp organic turbinado sugar
2 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
A few grinds of pepper

Wet Ingredients
1 egg
1/8 C Fearn soya powder + 1/2 C water (or 1/2 C unsweetened soy milk)
1/2 C organic pasta sauce, plus a little extra
1/3 C olive oil

1. Line a 12 cup muffin tin and preheat the oven to 350 (f).
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
3. Whisk together the wet ingredients in a small to medium mixing bowl.
4. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
5. If the batter looks too dry, stir in a little extra pasta sauce.
6. Fill muffin tins evenly, then smooth tops down with dampened fingers.
7. Top each muffin with about 3/4 tsp pesto streusel, spreading it evenly over the muffin top with your fingers.
8. Sprinkle a few pine nuts on top of each muffin, then press in so they stay.
9. Bake for about 15 minutes (test after 12).

Thoughts for next time:

• I'll add more pine nut and pecorino to the streusel, and maybe use a little more on each muffin.
• I think the batter needs more salt, and maybe more garlic. Some chives might be nice.

Lenten Lentil Muffins

On Monday I had another muffin vision.  It seems to take at least three rounds of tweakage to an existing recipe to achieve a muffinly vision.

Today's muffins were only round 2, and are therefore not the realization of Monday's vision. But these little guys seemed worthy of official muffinhood in their own right.

Lenten Lentil Muffins

Vegetable Ingredients
1 cup reasonably drained cooked green lentils (do not overcook)
1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped fine
4 oz frozen organic chopped spinach

Dry Ingredients
30 g. white rice flour
60 g. brown rice flour
30 g. garbanzo-fava flour
1 TBSP baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp each, slightly rounded: Rosemary, thyme, garlic, parsley
Freshly ground salt & pepper to taste

Wet Ingredients
1/4 cup soya powder (instant soy milk) mixed with 1/2 cup water
1 tsp cider vinegar
42 g. olive oil
1 egg

Topping
About 1/4 to 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 400 (f) and line a muffin tin with 12 muffin liners.
2. Saute onion and spinach in a small amount of olive oil until onion is translucent and vegetables appear dry, but extrude a small amount of liquid when pressed firmly with a spatula. Let cool and mix in the lentils.
3. Whisk dry ingredients together in a small bowl.
4. Whisk wet ingredients together in a medium bowl.
5. Add vegetables to wet ingredients and mix well.
6. Stir in dry ingredients, and add up to 1/4 cup water to get a nice batter consistency. The amount of water you need will vary depending on how much water remains in the spinach and how well-drained the lentils are.
7. Spoon mixture into muffin liners, then top with chopped walnuts.
8. Bake 16-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
9. Cool in pan for 2 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks.

The walnut topping is not strictly necessary, but GF muffins don't brown the way wheat-based ones do.  Using a topping adds visual appeal and helps disguise the lack of browning.

The muffins seem to have better texture after a few hours.

Blue Cornmeal Poppyseed Cookies

A while back, I saw a recipe for blue corn poppyseed cookies on the Bob's Red Mill site.  I was so excited to find yet another blue cornmeal cookie recipe that I didn't notice that it was ... a normal flour recipe. Blech.

Every time I leafed through my printouts of cookie recipes, there it was... Blue corn poppyseed cookies. The momentary excitement. The immediate disappointment. Oh, yeah. Gluten. Blech.

In December I finally got around to converting the recipe. I'm gaining confidence in my ability to do that. Sorta.  Trial #1: Use the GF King Arthur flour a friend had sent. Add a half teaspon xanthan gum.

Yeah, I know.  Bob has his own GF blend. Surely he wouldn't approve of my using King Arthur flour in Bob's recipe.  Had Mr. Red Mill have been there, he no doubt would have laughed when the cookies came out buttery, yummy, and... well... kind of powdery. (See, that's what you get for using some other guy's flour.)

So, a couple of weeks ago, it was time to branch out and start using my own flours. Much better.  Still maybe a little powdery, but kind of addicting, nonetheless.


Blue Cornmeal Poppyseed Cookies
(Adapted from Bob's Red Mill)

Dry ingredients

2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt*
1 cup blue cornmeal
1/4 cup brown rice flour
3 TBSP white rice flour (or more brown rice)
1/4 cup potato starch
1/8 cup tapioca starch
3 TBSP almond meal
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/3 cup poppy seeds

Wet ingredients

1/2 cup cold butter*
3/4 cup raw turbinado sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375(f) and grease cookie sheets.
2. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly in a small mixing bowl.
3. Cream butter and sugar in a medium mixing bowl.
4. Add eggs & vanilla and mix well.
5. Add dry ingredients.
6. Chill dough for at least 1/2 hour.
7. If you're going to make cut out cookies, roll out between sheets of plastic wrap, cut, and place on cookie sheets. Otherwise, just shape into small balls, place on cookie sheets, then flatten.
8. Brush tops of cookies with beaten egg (optional).
9. Bake at 375 for 6-10 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies and type of pan.

* If using salted butter, cut back on the salt to about 1/8 tsp.

The dough can be a bit sticky and tricky to use for rolled and cut cookies.  

Sesame Soy Muffins

Lately, I've been obsessed with savory muffins. 

Pretty strange for a girl who a) has a bit of a sweet tooth, and b) doesn't really like muffins.

But, then, most of my muffin exposure has been to wheat ones:

• The ginormous over-sweet, greasy ones from the big box stores, where every muffin in the assortment kinda sorta tastes the same.
• The slightly dry ones manufactured in bulk and delivered to your favorite coffee shop. And, they all kinda sorta taste the same, too.
• The homemade ones that, well, end up kinda dry and overcooked because the dear person who made them was chasing her kids around the kitchen and averting household crises while baking.

Nope.  Not a fan of muffins.

Until.

Until spouse 1.0 needed to go GF, and I needed to find ways of providing grab and go breakfasts for him.

Even then I resisted muffins. Too many bad associations. And, who wants to clean muffin tins? And mine was 20 years old and made of a really scary aluminum.

But, the grab & go allure of muffins eventually wore my resistance down. As all GF bakers surely do, I gave in and started making muffins.

And, I worried that all those sweet, convenient morsels would lead to Spouse's destruction.  If he became diabetic from all my muffins, I'd have to give up making muffins.

Enter the savory muffin.

Now, most folks expect muffins to be sweet. Savory muffins really freak people out:

Me to Taster 1:  This is a sesame quinoa muffin. I'm experimenting with savory muffins, so it's OK to tell me what you really think.
Taster 1: It's good, but it needs something to make it sweeter. Maybe some agave syrup?

Me to Taster 2: I'm experimenting with savory muffins, so it's OK to tell me what you really think.  This one is a sesame soy muffin.

Taster 2: It's... it's... like food.  Maybe you should add a sauce to it? Like mangoes or something?

Someone with a more fragile ego would have given up somewhere around here.

But, I had a muffinly vision, and was not to be thwarted. The goal: A muffin gently evocative of a hearty and pretty fried rice. 

Sesame Soy Muffins (Gluten Free)

Dry ingredients:
90 grams brown rice flour (3/4 cup)
30 grams almond meal (1/4 cup)
3/4 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 tsp ginger
A few grinds each of sea salt & pepper
1 TBSP baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp xanthan gum

Wet ingredients:
25 grams (1/4 cup) soya powder mixed with a scant 3/4 cup water  (or just use a generous 3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk).
1 tsp pepper infused rice vinegar
42 grams sesame oil (3 TBSP)
1 large organic egg
1 tsp GF organic tamari sauce
1 cup cooked black rice, slightly packed
1/2 to 2/3 cup frozen petite peas, thawed
2 TBSP finely grated organic carrot

Topping
2 to 3 TBSP sesame seeds, lightly toasted

1. Preheat oven to 400 (f). 
2. Prepare a 12-cup muffin tin.  For these muffins, I use muffin liners, and spray the liners with a spritz of organic grapeseed oil.  
3. Whisk dry ingredients together in a small bowl.  Optionally, whisk in about 1 TBSP of the sesame seeds.
4. Whisk together the first 5 wet ingredients in a medium or large bowl until thoroughly blended.
5. Whisk in the rice, peas, and carrots.
6. Whisk the dry ingredients
7. Evenly distribute the batter among the muffin cups.  Dampen fingers and slightly smooth out the tops.
8. Top with a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.
9. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick tests done. Don't overbake.

Notes:

• I used Lundberg Japonica, but any black (or mostly black) rice should do.
• Substituting tri-color quinoa for the black rice makes a really pretty muffin with a lovely texture.
• To make pepper-infused vinegar, just put some small dried chili peppers in a jar, add rice vinegar,  cover and let it set in the fridge for at least several days. 
• If you don't want to make pepper infused vinegar, just use plain rice vinegar. Maybe add a tiny pinch of cayenne or an extra grind of the black pepper to compensate.

Tastes Like... Chemicals

In the pre-healthy-food days of yore, one of the big treats of road trips was seasoned curly fries.  You know how it is: You make a potty stop at a fast food place, but since rest rooms are really only for customers, you need to make some sort of obligatory purchase to justify your status as a customer.

Our go-to purchase was seasoned curly fries.  We'd get an order and share it.  Extra salt. Yummm. We never bought seasoned curly fries in real life. Only on road trips.

And, plain fries were medicine. They were the thing to eat when one's stomach was revolting.

So, last Thursday we were on our way home from Sacramento, and something I'd eaten had left my stomach in that delicate, needing plain fries state.  

We got to our final gas and Starbucks stop at West Laval Road, and Spouse suggested I get some fries.

I'd heard that fast-food fries are often cooked in grease shared with gluteny items, and some fries are coated in a "modified starch" -- i.e., gluten.  So, if I got some, he couldn't have any.  I hate eating things in front of him that he can't have.  It just seems mean.

He assured me that, since plain fries are medicine, he'd have no temptation.

So, across the parking lot I went to the fast food purveyor to buy one order of plain fries. Got back in the car, opened the bag, and grabbed a small hand full. 

My stomach was looking forward to the soothing combination of crispy moist potato and salt.

I lifted the fries to my mouth, opened my lips, and inserted the long, tender strands of starchy, salty, greasy goodness. 

Brought my teeth down on them, crushing their crisp outsides, and unleashing their potato-ey insides.

I began chewing, anticipating the soothing, gentle flavor of....

...chemicals.

Chemicals???

The (bleep) things tasted like... chemicals!!

Where was the starchy salty stomach-soothing goodness I'd remembered?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.  And, there's nothing like an upset stomach on a road trip to make one slightly insane.  So, I took two more bites.

And then came to my senses. Rolled the top of the bag closed, set it on the floor board, and tossed it when we got home.

The good news is, the chemicals didn't make my stomach worse. 

The other good news is, this particulare fast food purveyor posts its ingredients online.  Just in case you were wondering, some of the ingredients in their fries include:

• natural beef flavor (including hydrolized wheat and hydrolyzed milk)
• dextrose
• sodium acid pyrophosphate
• citric acid
• dimethylpolysiloxane
• hydrogenated soybean oil with THBQ

 Yumm.

But, what's a THBQ?  And, do I really want to know?

Actually, this fast food purveyor gets points for posting their ingredients online.  And, they do have some food items that just include food.   Too bad that fries aren't among their food-only foods.

Molitos: Mole-inspired Black Bean Pancakes

Some leftover black beans were in the fridge, in grave danger of becoming green and gray beans if I didn't do something with them soon.

It was 7:20 AM, first cup of Via down, and time to think about the Spouse's breakfast.

Ages ago I made green pea biscuits and had been thinking of making some black bean biscuits.  Wouldn't that be just the thing for October?

On Tuesday a friend had sent a link to a recipe for socca -- a chickpea pancake.  I'd love to make some of those for Spouse.

But, I have leftover black beans on hand. And I can't find my garbanzo flour.

What if I made black bean pancakes?  What would you put in them?

Spouse loves, loves, loves mole.  And, it's hard or impossible to find gluten free mole. So, the black bean pancakes have to contain mole-like stuff.

Here's what I came up with... all measurements approximate, since I really just dumped things in a bowl and mixed.

About 1.5 cups of overcooked black beans, undrained
1 lg egg
2Tbsp flax meal
3Tbsp cocoa powder
1-2 Tbsp pecorino romano
1 Tbsp almond butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground ancho chili
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 Tbsp dry chopped onion
1/2 tsp dried cilantro
pinch of nutmeg
pinch cayenne
pinch of salt

1. Smoosh the black beans with a potato smasher. Dump everything else in, to taste. Mix it up.
2. Heat a little more olive oil in a nonstick pan.
3. Spoon pancake-sized amounts of the black bean goo into the pan.
4. Cook until it's almost dry on top.
5. Flip to brown the other side.
6. Remove to plate and garnish with a little more pecorino romano and a dollop of salsa.

Results:  Spouse like 'em, but I think they could be improved. Maybe more egg and flax for better binding, more almond butter, and more of just about all the seasonings.