Avocado and bulgur salad

 

Sometimes I forget about bulgur, and that's a shame. It lies halfway between couscous and quinoa in the time prep category. Bon Appetit once described it as the whole grain for busy people. But obviously it's not on everyone's radar, because BlogSpot doesn't recognize it as a word. (Um, really? I guess I understand; somehow I want the second u to be an a as in Bulgaria.) At any rate, this recipe makes admirable use of it.

Avocado and bulgur salad
Adapted from Bon Appetit, August 2022, an issue with lots of likely looking prospects.
Note: The original recipe called for 2 avocados, but once I’d sliced up one and placed it on the salad that seemed like plenty. It calls for raw pistachios, but I only had  honey roasted pistachios on hand, which added a certain whatsit. It also calls for fresh jalapeños, not pickled, but when you have a partial jar lurking in the back of the frig, you look for ways to use them up, and it worked well here.

Ingredients
¾ cup bulgur
¾ cup water
½ teaspoon ground cumin
5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
12 scallions
½ cup chopped pistachios
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Pickled jalapeño slices, equivalent to 1 to 2 peppers
½ cup chopped cilantro, plus more leaves for garnish
1 large avocado, cut into large pieces
3 cups arugula, leaves torn if large

Method
Bring water to a boil. Stir in bulgur, cumin and a pinch of salt. Cover and remove from heat. Let stand 10 minutes and then fluff with a fork.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium high heat. Cook scallions, turning occasionally, until charred. Transfer onions to a cutting board and coarsely chop.

In the oil that remains in the pan, brown pistachios over medium heat. If raw, season with salt.

In a large bowl, combine bulgur, scallions, lemon zest and juice, jalapeños, ½ cup cilantro, oil from pan used to cook the scallions, and remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add avocado and arugula and toss to combine. Divide among plates and garnish with pistachios and cilantro leaves.

Rating: I am now out of bulgur. Because of this recipe, I am going to restock the pantry. It's fairly quick, and really quite tasty. The cumin and charred scallion oil really come through. Good texture mix. Dave-approved, although I think the honey-roasted pistachios played a role there.

Arugula, couscous and lentil salad with lemon viniagrette

 

 

There's that happy moment each summer where we finally graduate from just picking a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes each night to that blissful time where you have enough to actually cook something with them. Still not a ton, but enough for this recipe.

Arugula salad with lemon vinaigrette
Adapted from Ellen Edgar Ogden’s “The Complete Kitchen Garden,” one of my favorite cookbooks I think I’ll cook from. It’s not reality of course, any more than the lovely, inspiring sketches of kitchen garden plans are in this book. Kitchen gardens are often messy and usually photographed from strategic angles to mitigate that fact, with heavy focus on paths and trellises. The spacing guides she gives are realistic, however, and there are helpful plant lists. It always amazes me how much and how little you can pack into a 4-foot-square raised bed, depending on what it is you're trying to grow.

Ingredients
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
3 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup whole wheat couscous or grande couscous, cooked according to package instructions and cooled
½ cup dry green or black lentils
6 scallions, chopped
1 cucumber, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
4 cups arugula leaves, torn if large
½ cup crumbled feta

Method
Combine olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard and garlic. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, cover lentils with enough water to cover by 1 inch and simmer over medium heat until just tender, about 15 minutes. (You want to avoid the mushable stage or they won’t stand up to being mixed in the salad.) Drain and cool.*

Combine cooled couscous and lentils in a large bowl. Toss with 2 to 3 tablespoons of the vinaigrette. When ready to serve, add the scallions, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and arugula and toss to blend. Add more vinaigrette as needed. (You will have leftover vinaigrette. You won’t mind.) Toss crumbled feta on top.

Rating: This recipe is late July in a bowl: Take everything fresh in the garden or market and turn it into a really nice lunch along with a few pantry staples. There's enough crunch from the cucumber and greens to offset the soft heftiness of the couscous and lentils.The bright vinaigrette didn't seem to need salt, plus the salad gets a dose of salt from the feta. I'm a big arugula fan, but if you're among those who aren't, mixed greens could work as well, probably the sturdier the better. We paired this with mixed berries for a very sustaining lunch, but it could also work well as a dinner side dish paired with grilled chicken or fish. Dave's take: This is all a happy medley.

 * Or, if you want to cheat, which I did: They sell black lentils in those 90-second cook-in-the-microwave packs. It put me over the edge to actually making the dish, rather than just thinking I would.

Ice cream blueberry muffins

 

I'm not much into gimmicky food. Viral sensations like this one for three-ingredient muffins elude me until they appear in newsprint. In this case the Washington Post weighed in with meticulous testing of a variety of ice creams, a gluten-free option, etc. 

I, on the other hand, totally half-assed it. I didn't have self-rising flour because why would I? I confess I had always assumed that self-rising flour existed because of laziness or cabin/camp convenience, the equivalent of biscuit mix. But when I looked for the substitution, King Arthur Flour explains that this apparently Southern staple is generally made with a softer, lower protein wheat that grows in the region. Their substitution recipe is 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1½ teaspoon baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt, but notes that for tender baked goods, you may wish to use pastry flour instead of all purpose.

By the time I made the substitution and added in the two optional ingredients, they became 7-ingredient muffins, but they're still pretty speedy to make.

3-Ingredient blueberry muffins
From Brunch With Babs on TikTok via the Washington Post.

Ingredients
1⅓ cup vanilla ice cream, softened to soft-serve stage (err on the generous side when measuring)
1 cup self-rising flour
2 teaspoons orange or lemon zest, optional
¾ cup fresh blueberries
Sugar for garnish, optional (the Post called for turbinado; I went with Demerara, but any sugar would do in a pinch)

Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line or grease 6 regular size muffin cups.

Mix ice cream, flour and zest in a large bowl until just combined. Fold in blueberries. Using a ¼-cup measure, divide batter among prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle with sugar, if using. Bake for 30 to 33 minutes.

Rating: I was highly skeptical, but these are actually pretty darn tasty. I went with orange zest because that's what I had on hand, and the result was a quite packed with flavor. The ice cream apparently does its job delivering the cream/sugar component. They rose to a reasonable height, and while they may not have had quite the perfect texture like these classic muffins, they worked well enough. I'm not sure I'd make them again because I don't tend to buy ice cream or self-rising flour, but if that's what you've got in the house, you could certainly do worse.

But really: What recipe makes 6 muffins? The effort-to-yield ratio seems off. The Post article did note that it works fine doubled. It also notes that they're better served fresh out of the oven, so perhaps in this case, maybe fewer is better for a small household.

Take 2: Bakery style blueberry muffins

 

This recipe owes its roots to a department store in Boston, apparently a dining room tradition cherished by regulars, much like the popovers at the restaurant on the top floor of the former Dayton's in Minneapolis. 

One wonders how much of that devotion is to the remembered ritual as opposed to the treat itself. I remember feeling so grown up when I got to go to the Younkers tea room when we'd go shopping for my back-to-school wardrobe. Funny thing, though: I don't remember the food at all, just the impression of elegance. That and the gloved elevator operators.

Famous Department Store blueberry muffins
From King Arthur Baking, a clone of muffins served in the erstwhile Jordan Marsh department store in Boston.

Ingredients
8 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar, plus ¼ cup for topping.
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
½ cup milk
2½ cups fresh blueberries

Method
Preheat oven to 375. Line or grease 12 regular size muffin tins.

In a large bowl beat butter and 1 cup sugar until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the baking powder, salt and vanilla.Add flour alternately with the milk, beating to just combined.

Mash ½ cup of the blueberries. Fold in mashed and whole blueberries.

Spoon ¼ cupfuls into prepared muffin tins. (They will be very full and definitely result in the "muffin top" style muffins.) Sprinkle remaining sugar on top. Bake for 30 minutes until light golden brown and they pass the toothpick test.

 

Rating: I can see why they were favorites. Out of the ones I made in all this round of testing, they might be mine.

 

So having found a really good recipe for bakery-style muffins, why try another? The combination of cream cheese, buttermilk and cake flour intrigued me to try this one as well.

I would say these two recipes show there's a fairly wide latitude in what constitutes a bakery muffin. One thing both of these have in common is some sort of topping. The other thing is that I'd say they're generally a step above what you get at most bakeries.

Bakery-style blueberry muffins

From “Homestead Recipes” by Amanda Rettke, as published in the Star Tribune. Note: The recipe specifies that the cream cheese, butter, eggs and buttermilk be at room temperature, so allow a bit of lead time.

Ingredients
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) butter, at room temperature
1½ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups cake flour
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 cup blueberries

Topping
½ cup (1 stick) butter
¾ cup flour
⅓ cup powdered sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line or grease 15 muffin cups.

Beat together cream cheese and butter until smooth, about 3 minutes. Gradually stir in sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well in between each addition. Mix in vanilla. Add flour and mix until just combined. Fold in blueberries. Divide mixture among the 15 muffin cups.

For topping, mix together butter, flour and powdered sugar. Sprinkle mixture over muffins. Bake for 27 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with no wet batter clinging to it. They do not get particularly brown.

Rating: These get good marks for being a very light batter, which helps offset the density of the cream cheese. Very moist.  My only nit was that the topping didn't stick to the top particularly well, although in retrospect, I wonder if I brought that on myself in my rush to try to get these ready to take to book group. In rereading the recipe, I honestly can't remember if I put in the right amount of butter in the topping and used half a stick instead of half a cup. So I'll have to give that part a pass and try them again to make sure. I wouldn't mind.These have the plus that they taste fine at room temperature, which I can't say about most muffins.