Sometimes it’s -4 degrees outside and the majority of the food in your posession is the very stale loaf of bread on your counter. Transform your odds and ends into this comfort food hit packed with kale!
¼ cup dried shitaake mushrooms (rehydrated in red wine)
1 tblsp truffle oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut the bread into 1″ cubes and place in a large mixing bowl.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and carmelize the onion.
While your are carmelizing the onion, beat eggs until they are a creamy yellow. Add buttermilk, truffle oil, salt, pepper, dill, and red pepper and whisk until incorporated.
Add carmelized onion, kale, rehydrated mushrooms, and goat cheese to the bread. Toss until evenly incorporated and move bread mixture into a heavy baking dish (we used a dutch oven).
Pour egg mixture over bread and bake covered for one hour.
Ed’s birthday finishes off the month January — just about the time my new years resolutions start to crumble and I’m trying to hold onto the last few strands of my dignified self by pouring over Goop recipes. Knowing in my heart that this is the year I will become Gwyneth, I did what every good girlfriend should do and bought him the present I’ve always wanted — a juicer. I made some concessions and ordered a very masculine black, only to find that my subconscious had gotten the better of me. So we are now the proud owners of a regal white Champion!
The struggle between Camp Blender and Camp Juicer is real. Not wanting to be disloyal to the years of service of the Vitamix, I’ve spent a long time preaching against all the measly yield and all the loss that juicers represent. When it comes down to it though, sometimes you just want the juice and straining fruit pulp through a sieve is a bitch.
The first test was an old favorite I’ve only had the pleasure of making in the centrifuge…so very slowly. Turns out Camp Juicer is just as great! Great yield and fairly easy to clean, but still a nagging amount of discarded waste. The waste lacked a lot of flavor, but I know that Gwyneth would NEVER throw away that pulp, so I did a bit of searching and found a few recipes for Juicer Pulp Muffins.
I’m a big fan of any recipe I make in the food processor, but ours is pretty hefty so you may have to break it up into batches. Recipe below is adapted from Plan to Eat’s Mighty Juicer Pulp Muffins.
Let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan
Notes
I’ve made a few batches of these at this point, and they seem to hold up well with any number of juice pulps. Great and moist without any added oils, the recipe is really easy and makes enough for a good weeks worth of breakfast for two. Note: they’re even better topped with a bit of coffee butter…post on that to come.
So we’ve gone (very temporarily) vegan. I’d like to say that it is in response to the shame I feel from a week of road trip food and a recent stuffed-crust-pizza-breakdown (YOLO). But in reality, we’re seriously lacking in a vegan option for the Steve’s Deli menu and I do my best work under tight constraints.
Our crop share included a pretty big bag of Crimini mushrooms this week. So, we thought lets make a vegetarian sandwich. We sauted some onion and the mushrooms in butter. A bit of wine. Then I remembered that I had just made a bunch of pressure cooked beef stock. A couple of jokes later, I added a few cups of stock and cooked it down until it was thick and saucy. We put it on a baguette with some arugula and garlic mayo. Man, that was good. Sometimes making food quickly just to have dinner and work on another project turns out surprisingly great food. I guess its helpful to have some pressure cooked stock around too.
